An Experimental Study Of Netflix Use and the Effects of Autoplay on Watching Behaviors

TL;DR

This study tackles the quantitative impact of autoplay, a common dark pattern in SVOD platforms, on user viewing behavior using a randomized design with 76 US Netflix users. A browser extension and DSAR-based data collection enabled precise measurement of baseline and intervention periods, revealing that turning off autoplay reduces daily viewing by about 21 minutes and average session length by about 17 minutes, while increasing downtime between episodes. The authors demonstrate that autoplay elevates engagement through reduced friction and shorter inter-episode gaps, but also show that user perceptions of autoplay vary, with about half of participants in the treatment group planning to re-enable it. The work contributes quantitative evidence to debates on user autonomy, design ethics, and potential regulatory actions, and proposes concrete improvements to autoplay controls that could balance convenience with well-being.

Abstract

Prior work on dark patterns, or manipulative online interfaces, suggests they have potentially detrimental effects on user autonomy. Dark pattern features, like those designed for attention capture, can potentially extend platform sessions beyond that users would have otherwise intended. Existing research, however, has not formally measured the quantitative effects of these features on user engagement in subscription video-on-demand platforms (SVODs). In this work, we conducted an experimental study with 76 Netflix users in the US to analyze the impact of a specific attention capture feature, autoplay, on key viewing metrics. We found that disabling autoplay on Netflix significantly reduced key content consumption aggregates, including average daily watching and average session length, partly filling the evidentiary gap regarding the empirical effects of dark pattern interfaces. We paired the experimental analysis with users' perceptions of autoplay and their viewing behaviors, finding that participants were split on whether the effects of autoplay outweigh its benefits, albeit without knowledge of the study findings. Our findings strengthen the broader argument that manipulative interface designs can and do affect users in potentially damaging ways, highlighting the continued need for considering user well-being and varied preferences in interface design.

Figures (9)

• Figure 1: Illustration of how autoplay appears at the end of an episode on Netflix. Users may (1) return to the menu, (2) opt to continue watching the credit sequence, stopping the next episode from automatically playing, (3) opt to play the next episode right away, or (4) do nothing, for which the next episode will automatically play after about 5 seconds. A color wipe across the Next Episode button operates as a visual countdown timer for when the next episode will automatically begin.
• Figure 2: Structural components of the full study design, organized from left to right in the order that participants completed them.
• Figure 3: Likert responses regarding perceptions of watching time and autoplay.
• Figure 4: Baseline watching metrics aggregated across all participants. All four metrics are reported in minutes.
• Figure 4: The curves represent the distribution of the Average Daily Watching metric across the six-month baseline split by control and treatment group. The vertical red line indicates the Average Daily Watching during the 10+-day study.