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I believe I read somewhere that it did result in an overall increase in viewership. There's no way they don't have those metrics.

My guess is that for some majority of users who weren't super bothered by it it genuinely caused them to watch more things. Even though a vocal minority was extremely upset about it, the numbers still worked out overall. Of course adding a preference is easy, and people who aren't upset won't bother to change the default, so this is probably a win/win for them.



I can't imagine but think "viewership of folks who left the app open"

In other words, could you separate out:

- folks who naturally came to a stopping point between shows.

- others who ragequit because of annoying previews?


Here's a secret: many people shout about rage quitting. No one actually does.


statistics bear it out: they just come to a natural stopping point between shows. :)


How did they define viewership? Because viewership of previews definitely increased.


Presumably they can tell the difference between viewership of previews and resulting viewership of the actual shows :P


You're assuming that anyone would be incentivized to tell that difference. Goodhart's Law is a thing.


If this is true (and it sounds sensible to me), then why not just give the vocal minority a way to opt out? This way everybody's happy.




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