The other day my brother-in-law sent me a link for a documentary on NetFlix about Alpha Go. I told him I didn’t have a Netflix subscription, so couldn’t watch it. The next day my wife tells me she wants to show “The Sound of Music” to our kids and watch “The Crown” herself. So, we took advantage of the free first month Netflix offer new punters like us.
As I understand it, one of Netflix’s USPs (‘unique selling points’ if you are not a marketing geek) is that they are able to suggest material for you to watch that matches your viewing tastes. Here is a great article I read after signing up with Netflix about it. I was curious to see how good it was for our viewing preferences.
After the sign-up process, they show you a page full of icons from well-known films and TV shows. You are supposed to choose three, and then let Netflix do its magic.
Since we don’t watch a lot of current media, I can’t say I knew too many of the shows – although I could tell from the pictures that we wouldn’t be interested in a lot of them. My wife could only find two that she wanted to put on her list: “The Crown” and “Peppa Pig”. We had yet to discover that every family member can choose their own favourite shows. If you don’t know, “The Crown” is a historical drama following the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. “Peppa Pig” is also British, but is an animated cartoon aimed at 3-6 year olds featuring a pig family and some other animals involved in lots of really edgy activities – stuff like having picnics with Granny Pig and visiting the zoo. Cover your eyes for that one.
My wife watched her first episode of “The Crown” this evening, and I was curious to see what Netflix was going to recommend. True, we hadn’t given them much to go on, but hey, they are the market leaders, right?
Right underneath “My List”, in “Netflix Originals” these are the first five shows the Netflix algorithm gave us. They all have 98% matches:
Gracie and Frankie: The trailer features two retired guys revealing to their wives (?) that they are actually gay and want to get married.
Altered Carbon: The picture features a naked person in a plastic bag. Research on IMDB tells me that it is a futuristic sci-fi filled with full-frontal nudity of both sexes and gallons of blood.
Riverdale: A teenager is murdered in a town that appears squeaky clean. But it’s not. At least the rating on this is only 14A.
Black Mirror: The picture has features a young girl with a big needle being stuck into her head. The rating is mature and again, according to IMDB, it’s got sex and violence throughout.
Stranger Things: The strapline on IMDB is “When a young boy disappears, his mother, a police chief, and his friends, must confront terrifying forces in order to get him back.” Season 1 is PG-13, but Season 2 shows us monsters eating people.
Now, I’m not sure what a 98% match is supposed to mean exactly in Netflix tech-parlance, but I would assume it means these are shows my wife might like because she liked a historical drama about the Queen and the animated adventures of a 6 year old pig.
In the “Top Picks for <insert my wife’s name>” section, it actually has some shows that might be a somewhat better match – but they all have lower match ratings than the sexed-out gore-fests I mentioned above.
Is this the pinnacle of Netflix’s AI and machine learning prowess? I seriously doubt it. And I also hope not.
But please, Netflix, take off the 98% match rating lies and just tell us you are recommending these shows because you make them.
I used to be kind of excited about the prospect of Netflix recommending great content based on previous ratings, but I’ve mostly lost that hope now. Agreed — they seem more interested to show you things based on factors above and beyond what a good algorithm would predict.