A woman had Netflix for 6 years.
She opened the app. She scrolled. She picked something after 25 minutes. She fell asleep during episode 2. She repeated this every night.
Her friend, a former Netflix UI engineer, sat on her couch one evening and opened Settings on her account. He changed 9 things in under 15 minutes.
Her homepage transformed overnight. The autoplay trailers stopped. The "continue watching" list cleaned itself up. The recommendations got sharper. The buffering on her 4K TV disappeared. The categories multiplied from 30 to 2,200.
She said "it feels like a completely different app."
He said "it is. You've been using the factory settings for 6 years. Netflix ships the version that keeps you scrolling longest, not the version that helps you find something fastest."
Here's every setting he changed 🧵