[_gabe_]

> terrible shows being greenlit, homogeneity of camerawork, casting, identity-politics pandering that nobody asked for, oversaturation of the market with streaming services that is almost as bad as cable etc. … Binge-tv model is also not a good thing

None of this is unique to Netflix. Terrible shows have been greenlit since the dawn of television. Shows are incredibly homogenous because they’re largely produced by a select few people. If anything, Netflix has broken that homogeneity by allowing more indie film/tv creators to breakthrough (like squid game).

Casting and identity politics shenanigans are definitely not unique to Netflix and started way before Netflix started producing content. The oversaturation problem only became a problem when all the other networks wanted their own slice of the pie. It was actually great for awhile when Netflix was the only big player in town.

And finally, binge-tv has always been possible. My grandmother would sit in front of cable television sun-up to sun-down watching whatever was on. 24 hour marathons of mythbusters and other shows like that were very common. Reruns of all your favorite sitcoms play all night on all major cable channels. Bingeing isn’t a unique problem to Netflix. Netflix just allows you to do it with new shows instead of waiting arbitrary amounts of time.

Also, is binge-reading a novel unhealthy? I’ve had 8 hour reading sessions when I’m gripped by a great book, like the last book in the Wheel of Time series. If that’s acceptable, why isn’t watching a show for 8 hours acceptable? I don’t think the medium really has that much of a tangible effect. Now if you’re bingeing shows everyday, then it’s unhealthy. But once a quarter when a new show you like comes out? Idk, that seems fine to me.

[rain_iwakura]

I'm not sure if you're joking about binge-ing but you have to be delusional to think that someone taping their favorite show on their own or waiting for it until it ends is nearly the same as dropping all episodes at the same time on principle for every show and only offering that as an option for a long time. building your whole UI around it and encouraging this behavior? The point about others jumping on the bandwagon can only happen if Netflix broke down the barrier and over-invested (by going into deep red) to justify accessibility, knowing full well they won't be able to keep up the steam indefinitely. I know you're trying to be smart here, and failing, but are books built to be binged? Do they know when your attention is dipping? Do books have such UI to do this? You can make same inane argument about doing math for 8 hours a day or something.

Also the scale at which Netflix was throwing money around was unprecedented, so much so that other tv shows and writers were making fun of it. That's like saying periods of good investment client are equivalent to a dot com crash or a housing bubble.

[jen20]

Not to comment on AI, or the merits of television as a medium here, but specifically on the drop-releases of entire seasons of shows.

I do not want to retain the context of some show across weeks. If I'm going to watch something, it will be all in one go, over the course of some reasonable time period that _I_ define - that may be a single day (transatlantic flight, for example), or may be a single week.

Typically for the streaming services that don't release all episodes at once, that means I won't even start until the complete season is available, and almost inevitably will get so annoyed by the service that I will just cancel a subscription to it.

[_gabe_]

I’m not joking.

> but you have to be delusional to think that someone taping their favorite show on their own or waiting for it until it ends is nearly the same as dropping all episodes at the same time on principle for every show and only offering that as an option for a long time

What? The only reason cable didn’t release seasons all at once was to maximize profits. They get to run more ads, to force a user to stay subscribed for longer to finish their favorite show, charge studios extra for prime time spots, and more. These big productions are usually done with the whole season by the time it would release on cable. It’s not like they would stagger the release out of the goodness of their hearts to help people avoid bingeing.

What does it matter if you watch 8 hours of the same show or 8 hours of different sitcoms? I never mentioned taping a show and bingeing it all at once. I mentioned the fact that some people will watch large amounts of television regardless of what’s actually on the screen.

> I know you're trying to be smart here, and failing, but are books built to be binged?

And I guess you’re trying to be smart and failing? What’s with the backhanded comment. Why not engage with the argument being made instead of making comments like this?

That’s beside the point. The argument I was making is people for some reason find bingeing a show for 8 hours morally reprehensible. But reading a book is fine. The same thought process has been applied to gaming for long sessions. My argument is why are these different mediums deserving of different moral judgments? What makes reading, doing math, playing video games, or watching tv for long periods of time more or less reprehensible? These all serve one purpose: activities meant to entertain (maybe not math). Why does the medium the entertainment is delivered through make it any better or worse?

It isn’t. I think the thing people have a problem with, rightly so, is the lack of balance. It’s unhealthy to obsessively engage in one activity for long periods of time. But that’s a different argument altogether.

All in all, you didn’t really refute anything I said or try to show how any of these things are unique to Netflix. I agree with you by the way, but you’re framing your argument poorly in my opinion.

[rain_iwakura]

I honestly am not sure what you were arguing for in the first place. I agree that I was being rude to an extent, but your previous comment didn't lend itself to most charitable interpretation as it wasn't clear to me what in mine practically got you to respond refuting my points?

> My argument is why are these different mediums deserving of different moral judgments? What makes reading, doing math, playing video games, or watching tv for long periods of time more or less reprehensible? These all serve one purpose: activities meant to entertain (maybe not math). Why does the medium the entertainment is delivered through make it any better or worse?

I'm not making moral judgment on the medium itself. I love the medium, I'm a cinephile to be honest. I'm saying any entertainment that becomes gamified like this (be it books or shows), and having more and more control over you by the way of gathering data while you use it, is worse than the same type of standalone entertainment that has less influence. I don't think you will argue with me that a passive TV cannot influence you as much as a system that actually keeps track of your activities.

Basically, any medium that outstays its welcome in your life by underhanded tactics is bad in my opinion. If you've read The Diamond Age then you remember the "Illustrated Guide..." book which is basically adaptive AI that weaves in your life into its storytelling. Imagine an e-reader with GPT-6 embedded that does just that but instead of teaching you, it just keeps creating a more and more compelling story full of ads or something. I'd be equally opposed to that (and the reading of it). It's not the medium for me it's the vehicle of delivery becoming bigger than the delivery itself. The horse becomes the cart if you will. So a period of seeming freedom followed by this winter isn't good for the industry basically.

Now I'm not claiming Netflix is responsible for Marvel/Disney, those are separate beasts and processes. But I do argue that they come from the same tendency and desire that fuels other companies I mentioned prior: FB, Twitter, YouTube etc.

In terms of how Netflix itself is responsible, my argument is that its underhanded tactics in 'disrupting' the industry (lowering threshold of entrance, running at a loss for a time) just forced other players in the same local minimum and now everyone stayed in this way. And to make it even clearer I think my issue is that Netflix ushered an era of greater centralization and homogeneity, where practices throughout the industry became even narrower, and things like cancellations mid-season even more a norm. Now I'm not sure if it's necessarily different from the past (probably not) but knowingly creating a bubble and then resultant layoffs and losses of jobs are no different than a drug dealer who got you pure stuff first few times and then sells you diluted dope once you're hooked.

As I said I don't think anything fundamentally has changed in terms of how money men operate, what I don't like is how we keep giving them tools to become more and more powerful which is what I was railing against throughout this thread. Yes, we depend on their funding but it doesn't mean we have to help them secure their empires to a 1984 extent. Because at the rates it's going it will happen. Altman is a person who (given his recent actions, like military contracts) will lead us down that way. The employee revolt showed that these engineers only care for their bottom line.

Anyway, apologies for misinterpreting your point, but I do think you also didn't necessarily get mine. Since we are not in disagreement we can keep the argument but in more civil terms.

[sfn42]

Man i really hate how people absolve themselves of responsibility like this. "It's not my fault I spent all weekend watching Netflix, it's their UI!"

No, it isn't. I love when they release full seasons at a time. I can watch them at whatever pace I please. If some degenerate can't control themselves that's their problem.

"But muh children" parent them. "But irresponsible parents" Netflix is probably the best case scenario there.

[techno_tsar]

I don’t interpret this discussion as about absolving oneself of responsibility. To be fair, what people spend their weekends doing is none of my business.

But it is true that Netflix makes UI decisions that encourage binging. They are not evil for doing so, because honestly, there isn’t anything wrong with binging anyway, but it’s indicative of the logic that is going to be used when it comes to producing their own shows.

[sfn42]

You could say they encourage binging, you could say they have good UX. I don't really know what type of functionality were talking about here, I'm thinking things like automatically playing the next episode, skipping intros etc. To me that's just good design, it's exactly what I want the app to do.

And I don't really see how Netflix benefits from binging. It seems to me that Netflix is more like gyms - they want customers who pay but don't use the service. The more you watch the more you're costing Netflix. If you pay but never watch anything you're the perfect customer, they're collecting free money.

If you just watch a full show in a weekend and unsubscribe that's really not ideal for them.

[StreetChief]

What if they are spending their weekends building devices to kill you? Does it now become your business?

[rain_iwakura]

No one is saying you don't have agency as an individual. This is an aggregate statement. In any A/B test you're interested in proportion of people converted who displayed increase in desired behavior. What you can't do is to go on an extrapolate this to any individual person, because that's now how statistics work or are designed.

You're taking an rightwing/libertarian approach (no judgement) where everyone has complete free will to do anything they want and make fully informed decisions. Rational actor and all that. Reality is quite different, and if you don't believe me you can peruse a ton of work in behavioral economics that show it.

Hell, I don't even need to go far to conjure an example: gambling addicts.

[sfn42]

I don't really know what you think I don't understand. I'm not arguing from the point of view of an A/B test, I'm arguing from the point of a Netflix user.

I don't care how others ruin their lives. There's a million and one ways to do so and if you try to remove one they'll fine another. If you choose to binge Netflix all day that's on you. If you choose to overindulge in drugs or food or whatever, that's on you.

By all means, help people who need it. I'm a strong supporter of all kinds of social safety nets. Free healthcare, free rehab, free counseling, free education, bring it on. It's the best possible investment a society can make, any society that ignores these obvious improvements is shooting itself in the foot. If someone needs and wants help, help them.

All I'm saying is Netflix (and similar) is great the way it is. It's a much much much better experience than tv used to be.

So when I see people seemingly hold them responsible for the behavior of their users, it honestly makes me angry. They're doing what we want. We should celebrate them for that, not criticize them. It's not their fault people can't control themselves.

And I fail to see what you think the motivation is. You seem to think Netflix is secretly scheming to make their viewers binge more - why? That would be like a gym trying to make their support members come in to the gym. Fact is if everyone went to the gym on a weekly basis they wouldn't have space for half of their members and they would go bankrupt. I don't know the details of Netflix's server costs but I'm betting that if everyone on there were to start binging everything they would go under as well. I don't see any reason why Netflix would want people to binge more. Not one. It would increase server costs, maybe also licensing costs, bring in zero extra money, and once people were done watching everything interesting they would unsubscribe. It seems much more favorable for them if people watched one episode per week and kept paying for years while hardly using Netflix servers.

But we don't want one episode per week, we want to decide our own pace. We don't want to have to choose to play the next episode, we can pause the show whenever we want to. We don't want to watch the same intro for each episode.

That's why we pay for the service - it's what we want. That's their incentive. Not making degenerates spend more in server costs per week than they pay per month. That's not good business for Netflix.