Netflix CEO worried on ‘over personalisation’
December 19, 2013
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has expressed worries that over personalisation of media services will lead to a kind of Balkanisation with people never sampling new material and an end to ‘audience events.’
At a panel session about digital delivery at a meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, Hastings said that personalisation is great for the user in the short but worried that hyper-targeted information just reinforces polarisation in society and the world.
He said that society has benefited from the homogenising influence of mass entertainment, of networks with a broad audience, and the unifying nature of major sports or events. He suggested that that the key to personalising information is to “harness the positives” and “mitigate the downsides.”