The Clickbaitification of Netflix
I worked at Facebook for some time, and did a bunch of data work. We had this culture of building something, looking at the results between the experiment groups, and then choosing the statistically more successful one -- i.e. a newsfeed algorithm that had better engagement.<p>This sounds great at first, and certainly is straightforward if you want a promotion. But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our observations only amounted to short-term gains. Although we had small long-term experiment holdout groups, the truth is they were rarely reviewed because it was unsexy.<p>My current thinking is that features like the echo chamber effects from Facebook&#x27;s algorithms, Snapchat&#x27;s snap streaks, and clickbait like this, all serve to optimize short-term engagement. Yeah, I want to watch that sexy new show or keep my streak going or have my opinions validated. But there&#x27;s a diminishing return on clickbait, hollow articles isn&#x27;t there? I can only fill up so much time with garbage like that before I&#x27;m bored. I can only like so many posts before I feel like they&#x27;re all the same. And once my snap streak is broken I hate snapping.<p>The data&#x2F;engineering&#x2F;product loops at tech companies favor boosting short-term metrics; The employees are incentivized to do so and this is what they measure, so this is what they build. That&#x27;s why we end up with features like this. That&#x27;s why Snapchat fell off. That&#x27;s why Facebook fell off. And that&#x27;s why Netflix feels increasingly stale (despite there being a lot of quality content if you dig).