[snek_case]

I feel like Netflix always kind of had an issue with poor taste. They have crappy reality shows and pseudo-documentaries about how the aliens build pyramids. A metric fuckton of content that caters to people with below average intelligence. In addition to this content being unhealthy because you either don't learn anything, or are actively being fed falsehoods, I think it just gives the platform a poor image.

It's kind of sad because Netflix had over 5 billion in net income last year, and 30B in total revenue. Suppose that Netflix can afford to spend 15-20B on content a year. You could do so much with that money. I mean, 20B is 20 thousand million dollars. Assuming you take just 5 billion and fund indie movies at 20M a pop, you could produce 250 indie movies a year. If they were smart about it, they would give scholarships to kids coming out of movie school. Create movie making contests. Give a lot of fresh young creative people a shot, and keep funding the creatives that produce the better reviewed content... Like, you know... A meritocracy of sorts...

Most people coming out of movie school never get to produce movies. There's just a lot of wasted talent out there. If you have tens of billions of dollars, there's no excuse for producing shit content year after year.

[vagrantJin]

I suspect the data teams have a lot of sway at netflix right at the top exec levels. I know this anecdotally since I am close to someone who has approached Netflix and was told it wont work for them.

Their reasoning was as simple as it can get. Their data showed what shows people liked in terms of genres and runtimes.

That might seem reasonable for short term gains until you realise how silly it is for longevity.

[hackinthebochs]

Blind allegiance to data is a grave mistake. Numbers are meaningless without context. But if you misunderstand the context that is producing the numbers, you end up being much worse informed than without the data at all. I fear that people take data and whatever default interpretation as gospel and are loathe to go against it. Faux objectivity is an acute danger that we must all be on guard against.

[snek_case]

I agree and I think it's kind of like that quote from Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

If you look at what people like in your current library of content which you've classified into 10 different categories, you get an incomplete picture and you're kind of looking in the rear view mirror. Steve Jobs understood this too.

[closedloop129]

>A metric fuckton of content that caters to people with below average intelligence.

The big question is how big is the fraction of people who are below average intelligence. Depending on that ratio, it could make sense to produce content for that part of the population ...

Additionally, highly intelligent people earn more money and don't have to buy content wholesale. They can afford to buy movies directly which means that each view of intelligent content is worth much more. Now, how can Netflix integrate that into their platform? There won't be any bargains left. Even young talented creatives will demand what they are worth.

There have to be different streaming services for different quality levels. Netflix has decided to serve some fraction of the bell curve and leaves other fractions to others.

[snek_case]

I'd say part of the problem here is that consciously or not, people tend to follow influencers, and flock to brands that are more aspirational (e.g. Apple). If you cater specifically to people who like mediocre content, you lose the interest of the people with better taste. Your brand then becomes a brand associated with people that have poor taste, and eventually, even people with poor taste see that the brand is not cool, and they leave too.

[mariusor]

> The big question is how big is the fraction of people who are below average intelligence.

Allow me to be cheeky and save you the suspense: it's half.

[colinmhayes]

> The big question is how big is the fraction of people who are below average intelligence.

George Carlin figured this one out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs

[native_samples]

Indie movies are absolutely notorious for their habit of appealing to low intelligence people, it's practically their main market. They don't have much budget to tell an interesting story with, and are often being written by grant funded people without much experience and who are just desperate to make a movie (any movie) so they end up relying a lot on faux depth and complicated BS to make the movie seem like it has more to say than it really does. Critics lap that stuff up but most people who just want to be entertained with a risky but well made idea that doesn't puff itself up, the bigger studios are where you'll find them.