[Brian_K_White]

The ground truth that I never click on Stargate on Netflix is completely at odds with the actual truth that I love Stargate and want more of it and things like it.

What the ground truth usage data is completely ignorant of is that Netflix's copy is a crappy blurry transfer, and so I got dvds instead.

[dpark]

Telemetry doesn’t tell the “why”. You never clicking in Stargate in Netflix is apparently true, so the telemetry isn’t wrong. It just doesn’t answer why.

[Brian_K_White]

Le duh. The whole point is that the perfectly true data is misleading and uninformative, and the "ground truth usage data" argument has a plot hole.

It's not that it has no value at all, it's just that it's stupid to know one thing (how to collect usage data) and think that is all you need to know and that that obviates all other sources of understanding.

If you wish to collect money from human customers, you have to be some minimum level of human yourself. Talking to your customers is not some icky hardship to be avoided and replaced with nice bash script.

[selcuka]

Sure, but Netflix is not interested in whether you love Stargate or not. Telemetry says that you never click it, so it's ok to remove it from their catalogue (which is correct).

Now, they could've done a better job by increasing the quality, but that's a further (and costly) optimisation.

[mort96]

Netflix should be very interested in a fact like "Netflix has show X, but Netflix subscribers who love show X choose to watch it someplace else due to issues with Netflix".

[Brian_K_White]

It's not correct. I paid someone else for dvds. A little more of that and I may consciously question why I pay both netflix and ebay.