I think part of it is that the quality of the hard product, as the Atlantic calls it, has declined. The catalog is thinner than ever (in quality and IP, perhaps less so in raw quantity) and the magic of recommendations is now poorly disguising its attempt to just make you watch content that's just barely good enough to not make you churn but without breaking the bank.
So when the soft benefit of social sharing is now penalized (risk being SOL if trying to watch Netflix in a hotel room while on the road) and monetized the users are annoyed. On top of this Netflix is somewhat of the ideal scapegoat for another frustration, media fragmentation. I think that one is a bit unfair but I know a few people who sort of blame Netflix as the kingpin of the streaming industry for the fact they need 7 different streaming services that each ramp up the advertising dials every year despite starting out ad-free.
Not to mention the online shilling everywhere from their social media team that tried to justify the price hike claiming Netflix was forced to do so because of account sharing ... Netflix really needs to fire its marketing team and hire some competent people.
Because it takes my money and makes me the product. It deploys pathetic dark patterns to make its catalogue look like its worth something. Actively hinders my attempt to search, browse to something I actually might find worth watching, however in most cases it doesn’t have that something. Whenever I see that red “N” on any program’s banner/thumbnail I almost get a mild repulsion anticipating its signature formula production shite show/film. But I am not really angry. I kind of feel disgusted by Netflix at this point.
I feel the same way about the red 'N', and that association on a large scale is very bad for business. Once your logo becomes a marker for something to avoid, your brand is toast. Very hard to reverse such a perception.
I'm angry at Netflix because of the 4K nickel-and-diming, which is IMO far worse than setting password-sharing limits. Why is 4K $13/month more than their cheapest ad-based offering, and $4.50/month more than the standard package?
This is a truly ludicrous markup on something that costs them literally pennies in terms of infrastructure and network bandwidth each month. It's roughly akin to back when phone companies charged ridiculous amounts each month for Caller ID or SMS messages, even though the network was designed to carry those at virtually no cost.
My other streaming services don't charge extra for 4K, and it's quite obvious that it costs Netflix virtually nothing compared with the other plans, and so it's an obviously bad-faith pricing strategy that just makes them look bad.
No, I'm angry at Netflix because despite raising prices over and over in the name of 'content', content is getting markedly worse. They're now just padding numbers with cheap foreign content, mostly from eastern Europe, India, and Korea, which I have absolutely zero interest in. Most of it isn't even -good- content, and they're all either poorly dubbed, or not dubbed at all.
> They're now just padding numbers with cheap foreign content, mostly from eastern Europe, India, and Korea
Netflix gets reputation from good content, not the number of shows, the primary marketing has switched from size of library to range. 1000 TV shows mean less than one Seinfeld or The Office.
It's not padding just because you don't know the language they're speaking.
Also Dark, Casa de Papel and Squid Game were huge. I will agree on one point though, the dubbing is criminal.
The Korean content is easily some of the best TV around right now. Not sure I'd lump it in with the rest. Squid Game, Little Women, The Glory, Itaewon Class, and numerous other Netflix Korean shows are definitely top tier TV.
> Most of it isn't even -good- content, and they're all either poorly dubbed, or not dubbed at all.
Watch them with subtitles, then? Dubbing is usually awful and changes the actual dialog so it can match the lip movements. I'm not going to down anyone who watches dubs, but if your complaint is that the dubs are bad, the only way to get around that is to use the subs.
If I pay for a family plan, I expect to be able to share my plan with my family...even if they don't live with me. Thats what the family plan is for, and why most people buy it. If I can't share my account, why should I pay for a family account at all?
I mean I think it's quite clear that the family plan meant a co-located nuclear family.
This was clear to me even though I share my girls 50/50 with my ex-husband so I really don't benefit from this at all because whose account should they use on their iPads, mine or his?
I live on the same property as my parents in a separate house with separate internet connections. Their house is less than 30 feet from me. We share the same physical address. Yet according to Netflix, this would not count as family sharing because of our separate internet lines.
I mean, you are paying for multiple screens, not multiple IP addresses. Thats what it says on the signup screen. A lot of people, myself included, took that to believe that you are essentially paying for your parents/brother/cousin/whatever's netflix account alongside your own. If I can't show my brother "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" when I visit despite paying for an extra screen, and he is the only other person on my account, I have essentially wasted my money. I might as well illegally download it to show it to him.
IRL I mostly used Netflix to watch things alongside my brother. I have the account and he has the TV. Sometimes I want to watch things on my computer, but sometimes I want to go over to his place and watch something with him. He lives on the building complex next to mine, so its less than a five minute walk if I want to show him something. I should have the option of doing that if I paid specifically to do that.
I'm angry because I felt trapped scrolling through the same crap under different categories on the same page. It was not relaxing or enjoyable. It was abusing my attention.
Some people definitely are. The typical reasons are some combination of (1) Subscriptions are more expensive and restrictive, (2) discovering "good" content has gotten harder, (3) fan favorite shows are getting aggressively axed.
I once used the trial month to watch 3 series I wanted to watch, then saw that there's nothing special in addition to that, so I never subscribed. Specially the UI was a big pain, and the recommendation engine was really bad, both compared to Amazon Video.
Way too expensive for what they offer, but then again, I didn't know it was legal to share accounts, so I might have shared it and split the costs.
Ok I'm a little angry at Netflix but as long as they still have amazing shows like Cunk on Earth I'm willing to forgive them. Haven't laughed that hard in years.
The original DVD-only Netflix was amazing - it expanded my horizons, I started watching entire catalogs of French, Serbian directors, and not very popular but deep films of both U.S. and non-U.S. origin. It's not the DVDs - it's their matching engine. You wrote reviews, 1-5 stars, you could type in reviews (which I loved doing), and the matching engine was suggesting stuff and it was AMAZING.
When streaming came online, I was excited.
Everything since is a blur. All I know is, now, I spend 10 minutes scrolling stuff that is not even remotely a match for me - you don't need to be Pappa Google to know I won't like Marvel or various woke-y movies. I have esoteric tastes, but more importantly I want to discover more.
But the entire 'Silicon Valley content' culture appears to be: get stuff TO the customer, don't let the customer get stuff on their own. Which, if you recall, television used to be. Broadcast television you had to wait til 8pm for your show, and sit through endless commercials every 8 or 10 minutes. Then there was a solution: Remember TiVo?
HBO isn't any better, it just has better content. I was looking for "Stand-up comedy" and I couldn't really get that as a category, just UNSORTABLE search results. So stuff from years ago is mixed in with stuff that is recent. God forbid I look for RECENT stand-up comedy.
It's pathetic and it's a "conspiracy" in the sense that it's clearly intentional: it's a disempowering of the consumer with some vague promise of customization, AI, so forth and so on.
A lacklustre catalog (except the occassional interesting ones), poor originals, price increases over the years and customer unfriendly moves--all these seem to have made Netflix lose sight of what their customers want.
I would even say that they are on their way to becoming the Blockbuster videos of the 21st century and their new policies are as customer unfriendly as the notorious "late fees" of the bankrupt Blockbuster videos that Netflix had disrupted as an upstart in the late nineties with their dvd-rental-by-mail service.
I had canceled my netflix sub and haven't regretted it.
I'm mostly angry at Netflix because most of the kids content on there is absolutely dire. A lot of it is low grade CG with no dialogue to make it cheap to produce and put out in any region. I find myself having to ban the worst of it.
26 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 66.2 ms ] threadSo when the soft benefit of social sharing is now penalized (risk being SOL if trying to watch Netflix in a hotel room while on the road) and monetized the users are annoyed. On top of this Netflix is somewhat of the ideal scapegoat for another frustration, media fragmentation. I think that one is a bit unfair but I know a few people who sort of blame Netflix as the kingpin of the streaming industry for the fact they need 7 different streaming services that each ramp up the advertising dials every year despite starting out ad-free.
This is a truly ludicrous markup on something that costs them literally pennies in terms of infrastructure and network bandwidth each month. It's roughly akin to back when phone companies charged ridiculous amounts each month for Caller ID or SMS messages, even though the network was designed to carry those at virtually no cost.
My other streaming services don't charge extra for 4K, and it's quite obvious that it costs Netflix virtually nothing compared with the other plans, and so it's an obviously bad-faith pricing strategy that just makes them look bad.
Sounds like what most people expect and prefer (outside of regions like US and France where people have been trained to expect dubbing)
I'll take original voice actors and subs over any dub.
Netflix gets reputation from good content, not the number of shows, the primary marketing has switched from size of library to range. 1000 TV shows mean less than one Seinfeld or The Office.
It's not padding just because you don't know the language they're speaking.
Also Dark, Casa de Papel and Squid Game were huge. I will agree on one point though, the dubbing is criminal.
> Most of it isn't even -good- content, and they're all either poorly dubbed, or not dubbed at all.
Watch them with subtitles, then? Dubbing is usually awful and changes the actual dialog so it can match the lip movements. I'm not going to down anyone who watches dubs, but if your complaint is that the dubs are bad, the only way to get around that is to use the subs.
This was clear to me even though I share my girls 50/50 with my ex-husband so I really don't benefit from this at all because whose account should they use on their iPads, mine or his?
IRL I mostly used Netflix to watch things alongside my brother. I have the account and he has the TV. Sometimes I want to watch things on my computer, but sometimes I want to go over to his place and watch something with him. He lives on the building complex next to mine, so its less than a five minute walk if I want to show him something. I should have the option of doing that if I paid specifically to do that.
It had been a good idea. I spent more time outdoors or reading books or just sleep instead of watching mildly interesting serials.
Way too expensive for what they offer, but then again, I didn't know it was legal to share accounts, so I might have shared it and split the costs.
When streaming came online, I was excited.
Everything since is a blur. All I know is, now, I spend 10 minutes scrolling stuff that is not even remotely a match for me - you don't need to be Pappa Google to know I won't like Marvel or various woke-y movies. I have esoteric tastes, but more importantly I want to discover more.
But the entire 'Silicon Valley content' culture appears to be: get stuff TO the customer, don't let the customer get stuff on their own. Which, if you recall, television used to be. Broadcast television you had to wait til 8pm for your show, and sit through endless commercials every 8 or 10 minutes. Then there was a solution: Remember TiVo?
HBO isn't any better, it just has better content. I was looking for "Stand-up comedy" and I couldn't really get that as a category, just UNSORTABLE search results. So stuff from years ago is mixed in with stuff that is recent. God forbid I look for RECENT stand-up comedy.
It's pathetic and it's a "conspiracy" in the sense that it's clearly intentional: it's a disempowering of the consumer with some vague promise of customization, AI, so forth and so on.
God, I am angry at Netflix after all.
A lacklustre catalog (except the occassional interesting ones), poor originals, price increases over the years and customer unfriendly moves--all these seem to have made Netflix lose sight of what their customers want.
I would even say that they are on their way to becoming the Blockbuster videos of the 21st century and their new policies are as customer unfriendly as the notorious "late fees" of the bankrupt Blockbuster videos that Netflix had disrupted as an upstart in the late nineties with their dvd-rental-by-mail service.
I had canceled my netflix sub and haven't regretted it.