‘It’s so annoying’ say Netflix fans after app ‘completely ruined’ by ‘genuinely frustrating’ change to movie pages
ANGRY Netflix subscribers say they’ve spotted an annoying change to the app.
The irate TV and movie fans claim that Netflix has made a subtle tweak to how it shows content.
Movies on Netflix typically feature a description that lets you know what’s in store.
But a Reddit thread with dozens of upvotes claims that these descriptions have recently become worse.
The original poster wrote: “Annoying movie descriptions give no plot intro, just accolades.
“Has anyone else noticed a good number of movies with absolutely meaningless title card descriptions? Seems like a relatively recent change.
“Eg. for Dune: ‘This cinematically spectacular adaptation picked up six academy awards.’ OK great, that tells me nothing…
“It is genuinely frustrating as I don’t want to look up what every movie is about, and not all of them have trailers.”
It’s unclear whether Netflix has made any changes to the way it shows its movie descriptions on its apps.
The U.S. Sun has asked Netflix for comment and will update this story with any response.
TESTING YOU?
One user suggested a possible cause: “They’ve probably done AB testing on things like ‘description A vs. description B’ and worked out that people are more likely to watch a movie with the vague description.
“Although I agree you with, it’s frustrating.”
Netflix has admitted to using A/B testing in the past.
“We take a subset of our members, usually a simple random sample, and then use random assignment to evenly split that sample into two groups,” Netflix explained.
“Group ‘A,’ often called the ‘control group,’ continues to receive the base Netflix UI experience, while Group ‘B,’ often called the ‘treatment group’, receives a different experience.”
So it’s possible that some users may be seeing different movie descriptions if they’re part of a test group.
Netflix noted: “Each member is usually part of several A/B tests at any given time, provided that none of those tests conflict with one another.”
But whatever the case, Netflix fans seem angry about the reported change.
One user wrote: “Yes, I did….and it p***ed me off.
“Like Netflix is telling me ‘here’s a movie, watch it or not, whatever…'”
Another replied: “I think their goal is to completely ruin the user experience for whatever reason. It’s working”
A different user said: “Yes, I find that annoying too.”
And one added: “YES! It’s so annoying!
“If you select the title, the first episode will give their little blurb about it. It doesn’t give you a whole idea, but for me, it’s been enough to decide.”