The “Break it Down” Blog

I’ve been a NetFlix user for years, and always pretty happy with the service (except for a few throttling issues), but one aspect of the service that has really been bugging me recently is how the stars that NetFlix shows you for the movie ratings is not based off the community’s collective reviews, but rather what the magical NetFlix algorithm thinks you will rate the movie.

Given that I have no idea what the algorithm is actually doing, I have no idea how much faith I should be putting into this guestimate as to how much I am going to like something.

Looking at the shot above, is one of the largest discrepancies I’ve seen before with a movie/series, that’s almost an entire star spread between what everyone else thinks and what NetFlix thinks I will think… god, my brain hurts.

Do you think companies like NetFlix, Amazon and eBay are getting a little carried away with the recommendation systems when they value what the system thinks more than what they think the people themselves think? For example, what if you visited Newegg to buy a video card, and wanted to sort all the video cards by rating… but it turns out that you aren’t seeing the actual rating of the cards, but rather Newegg guessing how much you like particular cards based on your past buying habits… it would completely change the results you are seeing, infact answering a different question than the one you originally were asking: “Which video card is the best?”

I don’t have enough faith in recommendation systems to guess what I would really like, but I do actually like recommendation systems in general… just not when they actually replace cold-hard-reviews from users. I would put more faith in what a group of a few hundred people thought of a movie versus what NetFlix thinks I’ll like… what if I’m in a sassy mood that day and feel like a violent anime? I’ll never watch Witchblade because it doesn’t even have 3 stars… oh wait, it actually almost has 4.

Very confusing stuff… do you guys put that much faith in recommendation systems that you want them masking the “real” values from you for reviews?