Netflix Recommends Algorithms, Film Choice, and the History of Taste

Mattias Frey, "Netflix Recommends: Algorithms, Film Choice, and the History of Taste"
English | ISBN: 0520382048 | 2021 | 282 pages | PDF | 4 MB
Algorithmic recommender systems, deployed by media companies to suggest content based on users’ viewing histories, have inspired hopes for personalized, curated media but also dire warnings of filter bubbles and media homogeneity. Curiously, both proponents and detractors assume that recommender systems for choosing films and series are novel, effective, and widely used. Scrutinizing the world’s most subscribed streaming service, Netflix, this book challenges that consensus. Investigating real-life users, marketing rhetoric, technical processes, business models, and historical antecedents, Mattias Frey demonstrates that these choice aids are neither as revolutionary nor as alarming as their celebrants and critics maintain-and neither as trusted nor as widely used.