this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Shows and TV

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[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 10 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I'm torn between rewarding the best thing they've done and stealing from Disney because that's cool.

[–] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 13 points 20 hours ago

Stealing it is.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 9 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

They monitor torrent numbers as a guide to success.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 8 points 19 hours ago

Win/Win

If I get caught I'll just say it's for my LLM

[–] xyzzy@lemm.ee 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

What? What kind of success metric is that? I can't find a single source to corroborate what you said.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I remember reading about it years ago, around the time Game of Thrones was quite popular. Looks like it was 10 years ago. https://torrentfreak.com/media-companies-track-pirated-downloads-for-marketing-purposes-150218/

However, wouldn't it be foolish of them not to look at what is being pirated? They love scooping up data. It is essentially free Neilson ratings.

[–] xyzzy@lemm.ee 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for the link. Three thoughts:

  1. The entire article is an ad for a data product called Tru Optik, where the main selling point seems to be identifying revenue loss due to streaming.
  2. Netflix said they use torrent data to determine what series to acquire.
  3. Streaming services don't need Nielsen data, since they already have direct viewer data.

It's probable streaming services look at this data, but I was specifically questioning the "using it as a success metric" part. Their two main success metrics are direct viewer data and subscriptions.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Netflix literally said they use the data to see what series to pay for. That is another way of saying they monitor torrents for success.

Look, it's ok to disagree, but you don't need to ask for evidence for everything you read on the Internet that doesn't affect you personally.

If that evidence is offered, it's ok to just admit you are surprised and/or wrong.

Streaming services only have data on their own streams.

[–] xyzzy@lemm.ee 0 points 3 hours ago

You don't need to become patronizing, especially when it's something so small. It's a discussion thread. Your framing sounded unlikely to me, I asked for more information, and it still sounds unlikely by my read. We discussed it, and now we can move on.