Recommendation Systems Criticism

Discussions focus on the shortcomings of recommendation engines like Netflix's, which are criticized for being skewed toward popular content, lacking personalization, and failing to match user tastes, with users sharing complaints and improvement ideas.

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II UX CF quirky.com RandomPage ycombinator.com API TV UI recommendation recommendations netflix movies watched watch recommending algorithms shows engine

Sample Comments

adammarples Aug 21, 2025 View on HN

They kind of have, that's how Netflix and Spotify recommended for you stuff works

drivebyacct2 Feb 5, 2011 View on HN

Isn't Netfix renowned for it's awesome recommendations? What additional metrics does this use?

rhizome Jul 4, 2019 View on HN

Because recommendation engines suuuck.

adamnemecek May 17, 2018 View on HN

Lol their recommendation service? Are we using the same product? They are very heavily skewed towards popular things.

lordnacho Feb 2, 2019 View on HN

I've noticed this with recommendations, too. Something about it seems off.I'll watch a documentary about World War II, and then next thing you know it's recommending another 50 hours of Hitler and Nazi stuff. Or other war documentaries.Medium is similar, too. I read a couple of articles about cryptocurrency, and then there's nothing but crypto articles. I ended up having to actively find a bunch of stuff to follow to get some variety.I thought one of the key ideas in

findjashua Jan 28, 2015 View on HN

the 2 'low hanging fruit' solutions they can implement to drastically improve the recommendations:1. use the 'percentage of series viewed' as a weight for the recommendations, so i don't end up with a list of shows similar to the one i watched only for 1 episode2. filter out the shows/movies i've watched alreadyi can't even imagine why these haven't already been implemented, seem like such a no brainer.

artificialidiot Jul 28, 2013 View on HN

I can't help myself but think it's the whole point of a recommendation engine.

remram Jun 19, 2023 View on HN

Recommending the same popular things to everyone is a bad recommendation system.

mathattack Nov 24, 2020 View on HN

You may be overrating what they do. I suspect that 90% of the recommendation weight is based on what other people clicked after watching the same video.

lucasoshiro Aug 14, 2024 View on HN

The recommendation algorithms suggests things that are related to what I watched before. And I still need to choose one of the options that it recommends.