[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.