Netflix Removing Great Feature Amid Price Hikes Shows a Troubling Push

Netflix has come under scrutiny before for changing its pricing plans across a small period of time, and it has recently begun changing some features on its platform as well. A new change displays a troubling push from the company away from user-friendly ideas.

Recently, Netflix changed a key setting from its web browser UI, removing the ability to sort movies and TV shows by alphabetical (A-Z) order, as well as the removal of the ability to click through different genres on the site’s website player.

Previously, fans would be able to sort titles by either the year they were released, in alphabetical or reversed alphabetical order, or simply by whatever Netflix’s algorithm suggested for you. Now, though, it seems like the only option is to listen to Netflix’s algorithm, which is precisely where the issue comes in.

Netflix’s change continues to show streaming platform is pushing wrong things

While at surface level it might seem innocuous to remove features like alphabetical sorting or the ability to sort by release, it is a troubling sign all the same. Netflix has always leaned more into presenting titles that it believes its own algorithm would prefer you to watch, but having the option to circumvent that was key.

Allowing users to find their own content not only makes the platform easier to use, but more enjoyable. However, Netflix obviously would prefer that its own algorithm pushes shows and movies that Netflix has more incentive to show, but this has been a proven issue in the past. This issue has already been highlighted by fans on platforms like Reddit, who are wondering why the alphabetical option has been removed.

This new change ends up being bad for a number of reasons. First, Netflix (or any streaming platform) will highlight its own original content first before showing anything else, and even when it does show broader choices, this can sometimes hide older or more obscure titles. It’s already pretty hard to randomly stumble upon something new on Netflix as is, but being unable to simply browse through simple genres or by title name makes this even harder.

Secondly, this is yet another domino in a long effect of Netflix to completely simplify and seemingly take choice away from users who simply want to manually look for things. Over the past two years or so, Netflix has begun revamping how it presents its content on TVs, browsers, and phones. This began with a more streamlined “New and Popular” section on the home page, allowing for just a handful of big lists with very broad topics to appear. The mobile interface on Netflix (in beta for some, still) also changed, and seemed to mirror a TikTok-style interface that uses trailers and clips to highlight various projects.

At its core, these changes can be seen as more modern pushes for the company. Manual browsing is likely a rather niche thing for many of its users, and simply having a “boring” A-Z list is likely seen as a bad thing by the company. However, removing the options altogether, for no reason other than to seemingly force people to use the algorithm that has been criticized so heavily, feels like a step in the wrong direction, and will only continue to grow sentiment against the company amongst its users.

Source: Comingsoon.net