CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[WanMan]

So, I'm reading the fiasco behind the current Netflix endeavor to go to their subscriber base to come up with a better recommendation system. Apparently the current recommendation system isn't cutting the mustard as proven by some sort of subscriber base complaint volume.

I have to thence wonder how many people cannot decide for themselves if a Netflix title is worth renting. I mean, as a Netflix customer you pay a monthly fee. If you rent 1 vs 2 titles in a month you are paying the same fee, no? So, what is so wrong with 'taking a chance' and deciding for yourself whether or not something was worth renting?

Do many of you folks to this forum find it that you just cannot take a chance in Netflix rental and must bow your dead-brain condition to that is the masses (the Borg collective?) in the Netflix community to tell you one way or another? And I do find that this is a unique case in terms of monthly rental vs per title rental (which actually means proportional money on the table risks), and I commend the FTC for stepping in on this matter.

I am just a little disheartened that our culture these days has come down to a) not being able to parent your own kids, and b) not being able to think for yourself such that you need over-governorship to get you beyond some sort of perceived obstacle of taking a chance on a Netflix rental decision.

I always considered myself average (at best), but now I have to wonder if I am in the stratosphere compared to Netflix subscribers needing this recommendation system. Oh, here is a read:

Netflix has canceled its $1 million contest aimed at finding a better recommendation engine in the wake of a privacy lawsuit settlement. The company informed its users today via the company blog, noting that it had "reached an understanding" with the Federal Trade Commission, leading it to ditch the Netflix Prize contest.

Netflix first announced the contest—actually the sequel to its original contest—in August of 2009. The goal was to crowdsource its active user base to write a more intelligent recommendation engine based on users' past rentals. This is something Netflix already does, of course, but there's always room for improvement; the company wanted to find the Next Big Thing™ by offering $1 million to the person with the best algorithm.

Part of the contest involved Netflix disclosing what it considered to be anonymized user data to those trying to come up with solutions. This, however, led to a lawsuit by a closeted lesbian mother who argued that Netflix had not sufficiently anonymized the information and that she (among others) could be easily outed due to her own rental history. Indeed, within weeks of the data being released, researchers had found a way to use an external data source to decode an individual's viewing history with surprising accuracy, but Netflix did not immediately withdraw the contest.

The FTC eventually got involved and spent the following months discussing the issue with Netflix. That brings us to today: Netflix has officially settled the lawsuit and, as part of the settlement, is giving up the contest. "The resolution to both matters involves certain parameters for how we use Netflix data in any future research programs," wrote Netflix's Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt.

This doesn't mean Netflix is giving up on improving its recommendation engine—Hunt ended the blog post by saying the company would continue to explore better options—but the company will have to come up with new ways to "collaborate with the research community."

[ecrabb]

The whole issue is irrelevant to me because I suspended Netflix after they prematurely dumped HD DVD. I dumped them permanently after they tacked on the "Blu-ray tax". Problem solved.

SC

[dturco]

Wan is this lesbian week for you? First the prom lesbian ordeal, now netflix is against or out to expose Lesbians?

[WanMan]

Nope, completely different. Maybe the school administrators are the ones that need to be told what they are or should be thinking.