HBO Max Is Introducing a Netflix-Like Feature

Just a few days after increasing prices across all three of its subscription plans, HBO Max is practicing a little good, old-fashioned distraction by introducing a new feedback system that’ll let you rate the shows, documentaries, and movies you’ve just streamed so that its algorithm can fine-tune the programs it suggests to you.

an opt-in solution to decision paralysis

We all hate it when a streaming platform suggests something for us that we wouldn’t be caught dead watching. Perhaps we even feel a little offended. I sure have. In fact, every channel has offended me at one time or another.

The solution is for the platform to know more about our likes and dislikes, but that gets creepy. It usually means that platforms begin sucking up even more data on how we watch, what we watch, and when we watch, and I always recommend you turn those settings off for the sake of your own privacy.

The rating system, though, is unobtrusive, relatively transparent, and opt-in. It beats having streaming platforms go behind our backs to find out what we like, although they’re still doing that, to some extent, anyway.

But you don’t have to rate anything. That’s the kind of customization I like.

If the feature sounds like it’s been done before, it’s because it has been. Netflix has been asking for your feedback on whatever you just watched for years. Prior to 2017, Netflix let you rate shows, documentaries, and movies on a five-star rating system.

As our attention spans and math scores continued to dwindle, Netflix replaced it in 2017 with a simplified like or dislike system based on the old gladiatorial tradition of thumbs up or down.

HBO Max is using a three-tier rating system, just like Netflix, only instead of thumbs down, thumbs up, and two thumbs up (added by Netflix in 2022), HBO Max uses Love, Like, and Not For Me. Personally, I think HBO Max should take a page from Cold Stone Creamery and call them Like It, Love It, Gotta Have It.