[cptskippy]

Honestly I feel like Netflix has given up and just joined the crowd. As they lose non-original content they're slowly morphing into a cable channel like Bravo.

They no longer listen to customer feedback. Their categorization and search get worse by the day. They refuse to add an option to disable the autoplay previews that no one likes.

That'd all be ok, albeit disappointing, if they were still charging $8 a month. But they keep raising prices like Comcast or AT&T each year while the quality declines or stagnates.

[ethbro]

They're running the Amazon / Apple playbook in media.

(1) Start as a service provider, brokering sales from legacy producers who don't yet have distribution through this new market, (2) pivot to original supply, as legacy producers recognize how much money stands to be made and stand up their own distribution channels, (3, optimistic case) become so large that producers are forced to renegotiate with you, from a weaker position, because they must have distribution on your platform.

I don't think they're going to corner the market like Amazon or Apple did, as they lack the moats (respectively a hyperscale logistics system and first party hardware).

I'm kind of surprised Netflix isn't cross-licensing their back catalog to alternate channels. E.g. trading rebroadcast rights to the first season of Stranger Things to Comcast or a cable network in exchange for {insert popular program}.

That feels the most like an analog to Amazon Marketplace (context: remember, there was once an Amazon without third-party sellers).

[cptskippy]

That doesn't excuse the decline of their UX. They are adoptingany of the tactics and antipatterns used by other media companies that sow the seeds of discontent with their product.

[dwaite]

Netflix's goal with entertainment is to monopolize your free time. Its why they are willing to promote binge-watching, its why they consider games like Fortnite to be competitors in addition to (and in some cases more than) HBO and Hulu.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/17/18187400/netflix-vs-fortni...

[dmitriid]

Their UI is now meant to hide their complete lack of content.

They lost all the big catalogs and deals as Fox, Disney etc. ended their licensing deals. And even though they’ve pumped billions into original content, this can’t make up for the hundreds of titles they lost.

So, the new UI is meant to make you overlook all that and make you watch Netflix original content. To quote myself [1] their selection is ridiculously tragically bad.

https://mobile.twitter.com/dmitriid/status/11204104799549931...

[dwaite]

> They're running the Amazon / Apple playbook in media.

I'm not sure how this is the Apple playbook, unless you count podcasts (which they've never had an option to charge for) as Apple original audio content, or the upcoming Apple TV+ as a 15 year gap between selling third party video content and providing their own.

[paulddraper]

> Their categorization and search get worse by the day

And I cannot begin to fathom why.

Fortunately, there is flixable.com for Netflix browsing. But why doesn't Netflix itself do that? IDK.

[dmitriid]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19998908