When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about 100,000 or so. It was great because you didn't have to debate much about whether a new feature was a good idea or not, you just built it and tested it. If the feature didn't increase hours watched or retention in a statistically significant way, the feature was removed.
Autoplay massively increased hours watched. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was by far the biggest increase in the hours watched KPI of any feature we ever tested. There was some skepticism about whether the number was inflated by Netflix continuing to play when the user left the room.
As part of the autoplay test, we tested how long the countdown should be between episodes. 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 15 seconds. 10 seconds caused the biggest increase in hours watched. We thought that it gave people time to digest what they had just watched, but wasn't too fast (5 seconds) where it became jarring. Interestingly, Netflix recently changed the countdown between episodes to 5 seconds. That means they tested it out and found that people watch more if with a shorter countdown. This didn't use to be the case. Netflix user have become conditioned to expect autoplay.
So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the product team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more addictive.
But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.
So, I totally understand retention: that one makes sense to me, as that's revenue for Netflix; if I'm more likely to renew my account, then Netflix makes more money. But... I honestly don't understand why Netflix is optimizing for hours watched, and in fact I had assumed it would be the opposite (leading to Netflix actually making it kind of annoyingly difficult to watch the full credits on movies, for example).
> But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.
This makes sense to me: the more Doritos I eat, the more money Doritos makes. This isn't true of Netflix: every time I watch something, it costs Netflix money. I would, naively, expect that what Netflix would want to optimize for is some weird balance of retention (at high priority) and least hours watched (at a much lower priority).
> So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the product team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more addictive.
I also appreciate that the more hours I watch of Netflix, the more I might be "addicted" to doing so... but the reason I'd expect Netflix to care about that is because it means higher retention, which is already being directly measured. Any other aspects of my addiction don't seem to benefit Netflix: it costs Netflix money every time I stream something from them...
...and, it would seem to me crucially, it means that Netflix is "on the hook" for more and more content. If, on a relatively short-term basis (such as during an experiment), my measured retention is the same, but my hours watched is higher, then it means I'm burning through content I like to watch at a faster rate, and so Netflix needs to spend more money to rotate their catalog and create more originals.
It just seems so weird that Netflix would be optimizing for "hours watched", and I'd love to learn from someone more on the inside who was involved in that why they would do that. I understand why YouTube and Facebook optimize for "engagement" (even though I also think it is abhorrent) as 1) their revenue is based on advertisements and 2) they spread using network effects; neither of these are true for Netflix.
Hours watched differences may predict retention differences farther in the future better than short-term measurements of retention, which may measure reaction to changes more than it measures the steady-state effect of the change.
If you want to act on A/B tests faster than directly measuring long-term retention would allow, having a proxy measure of long-term retention that mitigates the risk of optimizing for transitional rather than steady-state retention has value.
Netflix has competitors. If we assume that leisure-time hours are fixed in the short term, the more hours you spend watching Netflix, the less you have available for Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS, HBO, MLB, or Disney streaming services. Thus, if all those have comparable prices, more hours watching Netflix translates to greater subscriber-perceived entertainment value for money spent on watching Netflix than on the other services.
Netflix does not have to be number one, but it does have to be high enough on people's ranked lists to be above their individual fragmentation threshold.
If a customer's hours watched is low and dropping, Netflix is in danger of losing them as a customer, especially when Disney comes online later.
Perhaps if CBS All Access tracked that number, they would give up, and contract with Netflix or Hulu to stream their content. It seems to me that it is the service that would be least likely to get subscribers that are already at or near their fragmentation tolerance.
Also even if the content is not the next episode I feel I would be more likely to go with a suggested (new) video or content rather than something that takes me time to find (and therefore in theory happier with the service). For example there are so many choices on Netflix that I find I often might decide to not even take a look because of what I think the content is. [1]
[1] An example of this is the most excellent (now in S3) 'Money Heist'. The Dali masks were an instant turnoff for me that for whatever reason (rightly or wrongly) made me think it was some kind of fantasy rather than a crime drama (not saying my thoughts were right but that is what I thought).
At the end of the month, the customer may think about how much they use a TV provider and not the other, and decide to keep Netflix and ditch any other subscription they may have.
It's true that it burns through Netflix content but they made 1,500 hours of original content in 2018, content that they have to create anyway for other reasons, so a lot of your free time is already covered.
Think of hours watched as a leading indicator for retention. You don't want to only track retention because by the time it drops, it's too late.
The more you watch the more likely you are satified. They won't make new content for you because you watch more. They know you will watch a variety of shows and will watch some less known content.
Plus view numbers are important for awards and privately they share with producers to encourage them to sell new content/partner up. No matter how much you pay artists still want the world to see what they created.
What I'm not fine with is places that autoplay that have no business doing it, especially if they do that specifically to brag about how many autoplays it has (i.e. CNN). CNN in particular is my main annoyance, as when I go there I just want to read their news article, NOT watch video, and yet I have to scramble to hit the pause button on their video the moment I launch one of their pages (even by accident, because I'm just clicking a google link or a Hacker News link).
So long story short; Netflix and Youtube or sites that are just about serving video (and nothing else), autoplay to the next video is fine and expected. EVERYTHING ELSE, DON'T AUTOPLAY.
This is a good comparison because we know it's a public health disaster. Unfortunately he junk food industry was powerful enough to repeal this kind of rules in their domain, and I'd actually be surprised if this one was enacted.
Does the perceived value of netflix increase when autoplay is enabled? I really want to understand this, I've been strung up on this for a while.
When you have to consciously choose to watch the next episode, you can also make the choice to turn off Netflix and do something else. The more you watch Netflix, the more likely you are to keep paying for it. When you actively choose to do something else, the less likely you are to keep paying for Netflix.
It's not the perceived value, it's the choice.
When you have to make the choice, you could choose to spend more time with something else (like a video game, a Hulu show, etc...). If you choose to do that, you might get sucked into that game or show and decide to not come back to Netflix. Netflix would rather spend the few cents it costs to stream you a new video (which is probably already cached at your ISP) than make your choice to do something else explicit.
That said, I think it's a great feature that makes it easy to binge through a series. Its beneficial to both parties in that way -- I get to not move from my couch and they get to send me more entertainment (and keep me paying them).
Also -- the more you watch of a series, the more you'll talk about it to your friends. And the more likely they are to watch it. If you get stuck on Episode 2 of 10, you're not as likely to talk about it. But if you keep going to episode 3, 4, 5, then you are more likely to finish the series. And if you finish, you'll probably talk about it, and then the cycle continues...
[1]: To a first approximation, anyhow. I bet there's a bump at zero, where people just entirely forget Netflix exists but they are still subscribed. If someone watches a single thing a month they're probably more likely to eventually realize they're not using it enough.
You might try to say that people have free will and can do what they want, but you know that the reason it’s done is exactly because it’s addictive.
True, but they can't make the end of the bag of Doritos lead you to the counter to get another one in 5 seconds. (yet!)
I get awfully suspicious any time someone so clearly on today's side of the digital divide feels the need to hop the fence back to yesterday to elucidate an ethical argument. (And esp. on HN where you'd be hopping away from the place we're all standing.)
What's the threshold of addiction beyond which a digital streaming service becomes unethical in your opinion? How about dangerous?
I ask because you unequivocally refer to the product you worked on as "addictive." I can't imagine working on such a product without a clear sense of what the boundaries are.
Too much of A/B testing is good only for people who never want to change defaults.
There's also plenty of other examples of government regulating or banning things which exploit human weakness. Ponzi schemes, meth, gambling, and more are all controlled. It's pretty clear that a lot of tech-company design is (intentionally or not) probably scratching a lot of the same itches. It's reasonable to expect regulation.
If we ban autoplay on Netflix, we should also ban cable I suppose (not a big loss, really), since cable will autoplay indefinitely.
I'm pretty sure you can turn it off for all devices from desktop Netflix's settings.
I somehow don't have autoplay enabled when I watch any series.
When they keep failing at self regulating shit behaviors that consumers don't want, this is what happens.
> the government shouldn't compensate for their lack of self control.
Quite frankly, I don't believe in complete self-autonomy. I think it's a great trait to strive towards, but the rise of behavioral psychology by itself shows that we can be poked, prodded, and nudged to do things that we otherwise wouldn't do, because "what we want to do" is a muddy non-singular fuzzy idea that can be tipped in whatever way the environment happens to be arranged or designed.
It's not about regulating people's lack of self-control, it's about acknowledging there are proven techniques that influence behavior and figuring out when those techniques are being taken advantage of in a socially detrimental way.
We can discuss whether continuous scrolling really is socially detrimental, but calling it "government compensation for lack of an individual's self control" is flat-out dishonest given that half of us here are about to go evaluate our latest adwords optimization spend or look at our next A/B test results.
"REFILL.—The use of a process that automatically loads and displays additional content, other than music or video content that the user has prompted to play"
https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/So... (pp. 3-4)
It’s rather anti-human, experience wise.
Right. But just because something is irritating does that mean it should be illegal? This seems like something that we don't need to waste taxpayer money on IMO. I feel like there's bigger fish to fry so to speak.
It's not because of irritation but rather to protect easy preys from getting stuck.
[0]https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/So...
They added an exception for advertisements, which is too bad since that is the only kind of autoplay video I would really be excited about getting rid of. The definition of autoplay in the bill is "The use of a process that automatically plays music or videos (other than advertisements) without an express, separate prompt by the user." If you are going to get rid of autoplay videos, don't have exceptions for advertisers, that just gives them more power.
I guess endless scrolling doesn't have to be bad. But I've yet to experience an implementation that isn't awful.
I don't think legislation is a good way to make developers behave. But I also don't know how to break the mess we are in.
also saving bandwidth on gifs
Instead of coming up with insane laws, the government can point people towards tools that will help them. For example, the govt could simply point people towards a chrome plugin that prevents those features from working, or a plugin that removes the links of any sites that have those features.
Absolutely! That doesn't mean corporations should have a right to decide for people how they should consume their content.
That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.
That's exactly how it works, to an extent. In a study [1], people with self-refilling soup bowls ate 73% more soup (p < 0.01) than those eating from normal soup bowls. Similar with popcorn [2]. I first read about this either in Nudge or in Mindless Eating.
[1] Wansink, B., Painter, J.E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Obesity Research, 13 (1), 93-100
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12
[2] http://projectputthatcookiedownnow.com/2011/bottomless-bowls...
Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake
Objective: Using self‐refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation.
Research Methods and Procedures: Fifty‐four participants (BMI, 17.3 to 36.0 kg/m2; 18 to 46 years of age) were recruited to participate in a study involving soup. The experiment was a between‐subject design with two visibility levels: 1) an accurate visual cue of a food portion (normal bowl) vs. 2) a biased visual cue (self‐refilling bowl). The soup apparatus was housed in a modified restaurant‐style table in which two of four bowls slowly and imperceptibly refilled as their contents were consumed. Outcomes included intake volume, intake estimation, consumption monitoring, and satiety.
Results: Participants who were unknowingly eating from self‐refilling bowls ate more soup [14.7 ± 8.4 vs. 8.5 ± 6.1 oz; F(1,52) = 8.99; p < 0.01] than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. This was unaffected by BMI.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.12
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/1...
In the past, getting as much social information as possible about your tribe was a huge reproductive advantage, but now that modern social network products have boosted the populations of our "tribes" into the thousands, trying to consume all that information has downsides that far outweigh the positive.
Facebook is basically the psychological equivalent of high fructose corn syrup.
In other words: I agree, this really isn't a great example.
(They remain legal, though.)
The lawsuits would include:
- autoplay of gifs vs web videos
- does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad
- does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad?
The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation thanks to having to fight lawsuits.
Example of the depths lawyers can class action: Godiva is being sued in court for putting “Godiva 1927” on the label; the lawyer is arguing that people believe that the chocolate was made in 1927.
*edited the content away from ideas.
> - autoplay of gifs vs web videos
Presumably the content is what matters, not the particular compression format. Does it show animated content continuously without being triggered by active user interaction? Yes, so it's an auto-playing video.
> - does Pinterest count as an auto scroll ad
It's primarily focused on a call to action, so yes, it's an ad. Would they show an equivalent popup for ordinary user-generated content that they have no stake in?
> - does an endless scroll populated with 50% real content count as non-ad?
Is there an ad that appears when the user scrolls? I don't even see what this example was supposed to demonstrate.
> The law will just create more headaches for the producers and less innovation thanks to having to fight lawsuits.
More headaches and less innovation in how to sell bullshit sounds like a very positive outcome to me.
By that logic a loading spinner is an auto-playing video. Does me logging in count as "active user interaction" for showing me a loading spinner? I didn't request the spinner, I requested access to my skype chats.
Also, it seems impractical to implement. As soon as those specific tactics are gone, others will be implemented that do something similar in spirit if not in letter.
This is very obviously and demonstrably false. I don't understand how anyone can believe this.
Want to host your own website? Be sure to hire a specialized lawyer to audit and sign off on the user interface choices you made (and be sure to retain them indefinitely as your dependencies and the law evolve).
I do not think it means what you think it means. (Or maybe I don't! :-)
I don't buy that.
Why wait? From Ars's writeup of the same bill[0]:
> As described in the text, social media companies would have to limit users to 30 minutes of use per day by default. Users would be allowed to choose their own time limits for daily and weekly use, but companies would have to reset that time limit to half an hour every single month, as well as providing "conspicuous pop-up" displays at least once every 30 minutes showing how much time you have spent using a service in the past day, across all devices.
This is just political grandstanding. (I hope) nobody would ever actually vote for this.
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-law-...
Cynically, I think the real purpose of these laws always looks more like protecting entrenched interests rather than helping people who would get better if only they had some legislator making their life choices from a thousand miles away.
Human's are not very good at regulating ourselves
Its easy to point out whats wrong, but nobody sticks their neck out and tells people how to fix the situation. Here, someone seems to be trying, and for that I give them some props..
Although these days, everything has to be either extreme this or extreme that, and common sense (like just not using those websites, or utilizing this thing called personal responsibility to recognize and curb your own addictions) has gone the way of the 8-track. Nope, we need the government to start fining people.
This doesn't do anything except make instant-criminals out of people overnight, signed into law by politicians who aren't even remotely close to being experts at the subject matter.
This makes me think of McConnell gaining support or lobbying from tobacco industry. Maybe this is a thinly veiled threat or request to the tech giants?
https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-youre-being-manipulated-1835...
Do you have any examples of google or facebook claiming to be a "carrier"?
This bill should also ban: large hero images, serving more than 500 KB of JavaScript, making more than 50 HTTP calls when loading a page, causing the fans to spin up when loading the page, unnecessarily using web fonts.
Banning these things would make the web so much better.
But how to make it truthful? Other than client cutting off download at the expressed limit. Would that be good enough? And how to express "fuzzy" sizes like "at least 1MB but might be a little more or less".
People in tech should be much more concerned than they are about the government encroaching on it. The government does not represent big states/big cities in proportion to the population once you consider the tiniest state has the same two senators as the largest.
"Facebook is known to be addictive and use deceptive practices in user interface design to influence you into spending an unhealthy amount time on their platform in order to maximize the number of advertisements you view."
> Deceptive design played an enormous part in last week’s FTC settlement with Facebook, and Hawley’s bill would make it unlawful for tech companies to use dark patterns to manipulate users into opting into services. For example, “accept” and “decline” checkboxes would need to be the same font, format, and size to help users make better, more informed choices.
So don't use color. Make the two choices equally clear.
Example:
Would you like to enroll in our craptacular offer which is free for 90 days and then costs $9.95 per month thereafter?
Please check one of the following options:
[_] No. Please DO NOT add me to the list of people to be excluded from being automatically enrolled in our special craptacular offer.
[_] Yes. Please DO add me to the list of people ineligible to not be excluded from not being enrolled in our special craptacular offer.
If you do not select one of the options, then default will automatically be selected for you.
Thank you for enrolling in our craptacular special offer!
I'm not sure if I am against endless scrolling, however. I would, though, accept the loss of endless scrolling if that would stop videos from auto playing.
That might wreck the holy grail of A/B testing that these companies live and die by, but it would be fantastic for the consumer.
I disabled Netflix autoplay for the reasons mentioned in this article.
Auto-play-video is probably very high on list of things that wasted so much time in human history.
With how many poor implementations out there (looking at you new Reddit), I don't think a ban would fix that but I'd like to see it scaled down.
And that's even before we factor in the possibility of lobbyist influence.
While you're banning infinite scrolling (which has legitimate applications, and people should be horrified that such basic neutral ideas of communication could become illegal), the dotcom bad actors are running circles around you -- with numerous other dark pattern tactics, and sometimes entire technology infrastructure architectures and platforms irrevocably designed around what could also be considered dark patterns.
I'm reminded of some other abusive industries, with regulations that create waste, and barriers to entry for upstart competitors, while not doing nearly enough to reign in abuses.
Bring on the regulations (and, hopefully, eventually, a culture of professionalism and responsibility will follow), but first figure out how to make the regulations wise and genuinely effective, not counterproductive distractions.
I always get confused by the 2nd page.
Can we also ban scroll-jacking?