As part of a lawsuit settlement, Netflix has killed a contest intended to improve the service's movie recommendations.
In 2006, Netflix provided anonymous user data to participants in the "Netflix Prize," an open, $1 million competition to improve the mail-order rental service's movie suggestion algorithm. The competition got intense as two groups battled to make the algorithm 10 percent more accurate than Netflix's existing methods.
But all the attention raised concerns that the data wasn't as anonymous as it seemed. Last year, Netflix faced a class action lawsuit over worries that the data, even when anonymized, could be used to identify subscribers when triangulated with other data sets, such as user comments on IMDB. With a second contest looming -- this time using even more information, including gender and zip code -- the plaintiffs demanded that Netflix call off the competition.
In a blog post, Netflix explained that the Federal Trade Commission also got involved in the case, and that the company has "reached an understanding" with the feds in addition to settling the lawsuit. "The resolution to both matters involves certain parameters for how we use Netflix data in any future research programs," Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt wrote."
Financial terms of the settlement were undisclosed, according to Forbes.
I understand that Netflix was trying to do good with these contests, but releasing user data to the public is just asking for trouble. Netflix should have at least asked people to opt in to the contest while clearly explaining how the information would used. Instead, Netflix had no choice but to kill the contest completely, which is a shame.
"We will continue to explore ways to collaborate with the research community and improve our recommendations system so we can constantly improve the movie recommendations we make for you," Hunt wrote. "So stay tuned."
