How Does Netflix Pick Its Thumbnails? A Lawsuit Reveals a Secret Team Paid to Watch Movies

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Ever wanted to just sit around and watch Netflix all day? And to make things even sweeter, how great would it be if you could get paid for such a privileged?

While this might sound pretty idealistic, it might actually not be all roses and puppies, as a recent lawsuit against Netflix reveals.

THR is reporting that a lawsuit against Netflix shows that the streaming service has a paid team of contractors who are paid a few bucks an hour to stream Netflix. These contractors are then used to pick out ideal screenshots from each movie and TV show to display to Netflix subscribers on their home screens. These contractors are also used to help Netflix optimize its recommendation algorithm.

Named “Project Beetlejuice,” as the lawsuit reveals, these contractors are now alleging that Netflix should treat them more like a standard employee, asking for a more secure job offer and standard benefits.

This sort of reminds us of being a young teenager thinking being a video game tester would be the best job ever, but it doesn’t take long to quickly realize that this isn’t grounded in reality. While Netflix would certainly prefer that they could automate a large portion of this work, but for the time being it appears they need some level of human interaction in this selection process. What we’re willing to guess, though, is that Netflix is monitoring “Project Beetlejuice” very closely in order to try and teach the robots how to complete very similar tasks.

Would you take a job watching Netflix all day? What movies would you hate to get stuck watching? Let us know in the comments.