They hinted at a potential controversy emerging if Netflix’s portfolio of original programming got bigger and the company’s algorithms diverted traffic toward its shows. 91 Also, the dependence of companies such as Netflix on big data to create original programming generated concerns over creativity. Questioned an industry observer, “Will screenplays some day be written to meet the whims of data-driven media streaming companies?” 92 Lamented another industry observer, “If Netflix perfects the job of giving us exactly what we want, when and how will we be exposed to things that are new and different, the movies and TV shows we would never imagine we might like unless given the chance? Can the auteur survive in an age when computer algorithms are the ultimate focus group?” …show more content…
According to Matt Pfeil, co-founder and VP of Customer Solutions at big data software company DataStax which worked with Netflix to implement Apache Cassandra, “If you talk about this age as the data age, we’re still in the teenage years, and as it matures there’s going to be orders or magnitudes of different types of technologies that just encompass big data. The more data you have and the more you can do with it, the smarter this business decision.” 94 However, others were concerned about the limitations of using big data. According to an industry observer, “Data can only tell you what people have liked before, not what they don’t know they are going to like in the future.”