The exception to this was their movie suggestion algorithm. But lately it seems to be pointing me to their cheapest-to-consume content, not the best content given my rating history. (I say this primarily because of the prevalence of old, old movies, of which I am pretty much never a fan.)
Netflix often hid high demand movies from customers on the new releases page.
They would showcase new release movies on their main webpage & in marketing, but if you actually signed in to your account & looked at the new releases section you would find those movies either hard to find or missing altogether.
I would not find it surprising that they might tweak their algorithm to direct people to lower cost content.
Lower cost in what sense? I was under the impression that Netflix didn't pay per viewer, but rather, licensed the content to stream as much as they want for a certain time frame. Is that not correct?
edited to add: Here we go. From the Q2 investor conference call -- "For streaming content, we buy like our industry and pay television and network TV buys and cable networks, which is you have to commit upfront, and you have to pay a fixed amount per time period, typically per year, for access to that content on your network."[1]
"The disappearance of Sony’s movies resulted from a clause in the Starz agreement. According to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because contract terms are confidential, it includes an undisclosed cap, which has recently been exceeded, on the number of people who can watch Sony movies online."[1]
So perhaps Netflix could tweak their algo to avoid recommending movies that might have said caps. I have no proof they're doing this specifically though. Though maybe this cap was on total users rather than on number of views per title. I do know they would hide high demand new release DVDs in effort to reduce the demand on the movie, which in theory would allow them to purchase fewer copies.
That's where the recommendation system is most prominent due to the high opportunity cost in the movie-by-mail system.
The Netflix Prize, awarded just two years ago, is so irrelevant to Netflix today that they'll probably sell the license to the winning algorithm along with Qwikster.
