Let’s face it:Netflixis the dominant streamer. Always has been. It’s gotten to the point whereHulu and Disney+ want to bundle with Maxto compete. While each streamer has its specific pros and cons (we prefer The Criterion Channelfor just movies), Netflix itself has become synonymous with streaming. And they generally have the best original content, as well; they produce some great stuff. But something odd has been happening in the last few years that rarely happens on other streaming platforms. Slightly older movies (generally released within the past 15 years) that never performed well at the box office or with critics have gained immense popularity.That’s because of the Top 10 lists.
Let’stake a look at some of the movies that have been in the top five most-watched on Netflix recently, and compare them to their box office returns, their critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and their audience score on Rotten Tomatoes in the table below. (It should be noted that, whileMadame Webtook in a significant $100.3 million at the box office, though its budget was $80 to $100 million, and $60 million was spent on its marketing campaign).
Movie in the Top 5
Box Office
Critics Score
Audience Score
Madame Web
Miller’s Girl
Dumb and Dumber To
Mother of the Bride
The Bricklayer
The Little Things
Irish Wish
Seraphim Falls
On the Line
So, what’s going on? Is the Top 10 list accurate?
How Netflix’s Top 10 List Is Really Calculated
The above movies are certainly a diverse mix, but they were either box office bombs, universally disliked,or obscure B-moviesthat seem more like direct-to-video titles. And yet they floated to the top like cinematic cream on the world’s biggest streamer. When you think of ranking something, what metrics come to mind? Popularity, awards and accolades, critical adoration, financial success? Those are all valid variables, more or less, but like many facets of its operation,Netflix uses a very specific algorithm to determine its ‘Top 10.’
When Netflix introduced the Top 10 lists in 2020, it used a pretty basic metric to determine what ranked — the number of views. However,it defined ‘views’ in a very controversial way. As reported byVultureat the time, “Netflix admits its rankings aren’t based on the average audience size of a title, the way Nielsen measures linear TV consumption. Instead, the streamer uses what it calls a ‘chose to watch’ standard, which tallieshow many people sample at least two minutes of a given title.”
That’s right, watching two minutes of a title was factored into how many times it was viewed. (Before this, a user had to watch 70% of a title for it to be logged as a ‘view.') 10 million people could’ve all watched less than 2% of a title, but it would’ve been logged as 10 million views. This is how the rankings worked for a while, until Netflix rolled out a new system based on total hours viewed, and on August 23, 2025, announced a new way to calculate its Top 10.
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Netflix Uses Watch Time Divided by Runtime for the Top 10
AsThe Hollywood Reporterrevealed at the time:
“The view tally comes fromdividing the total time spent watching a series or movie in a given week by the running timeto arrive at the number of Netflix accounts that watched a series or movie. (It doesn’t necessarily reflect the total number of people watching, however, as the simple equation doesn’t account for multiple people watching something together. It also doesn’t factor in repeat viewing of a show or movie by the same account.)”
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Additionally,they extended the algorithm to include up to 91 days of watch time, as opposed to the previous period of 28 days. While this certainly seems like a more reasonable way to rank titles than counting two minutes as a ‘view,’ many of the movies in the Top 10 list remain bizarre, leading to so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ about the lists. Forums like Quora and Reddit include hundreds of people discussing the matter, such as the below thread:
Or the below Reddit thread:
Like essentially every streaming platform,Netflix still doesn’t release all their streaming data. The clandestine nature of those numbers will always lead people to speculate that Netflix is fudging the numbers to promote certain titles. While there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that, there is literally no way to know without transparency. However, a little psychology and common sense may explain the number one ranking of movies likeIrish Wish, Mother of the Bride,andOn the Line.
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Top 10 Lists and the Feedback Loop of Popularity
People tend to underestimate the importance of feedback loops in economics.If something or someone is already successful, it stands a far greater chance of continuing or increasing its success than something or someone of equal merit and quality but with less success. Hence, the term “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer,” and why 1% of American households own 32% of its aggregate wealth. This is the flaw of unchecked capitalism and why there is no true meritocracy — someone who already has capital and no talent will almost always succeed more than someone who has little capital and an abundance of talent.
This applies to the business of art as well. A ‘terrible’ film with a $60 marketing campaign will receive an extraordinary amount of attention and box office revenue compared to a far ‘superior’ film with less than a $1 million marketing budget. This often works in tandem with human psychology as well.It’s a positive feedback loopwhen someone thinks, “Well, if it’s popular, then there must be a reason for that popularity. Let me see what that is and join in the cultural conversation.”
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“Some people,what they really want to see is, what is everyone watching?They want to be in the conversation: ‘Everyone’s talking aboutQueen’s Gambit.I see it’s No. 1 on Netflix. Damn, I want in on that action.’ So now, to complement the personalization [of the algorithm], we also highlight popularity.”
When Algorithms Dictate Our Intake, Everyone Becomes the Same
As of August 06, 2025,Madame Webis number one on Netflix’s Top 10 list. Are more people watching that film, with its 11% critics score and 57% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, than any other title on Netflix?When they see it in the Top 10 List, are they thinking, “Damn, I want in on that action?“In the research paper “Feedback Loop and Bias Amplification in Recommender Systems,” presented at the International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management in Oct. 2020, the authors speculate on the potential damage caused by algorithms to recommend ‘content,’ stating:
This bias amplification leads to several other problems, such as declining the aggregate diversity, shifting the representation of users’ taste over time, and also homogenization of the users experience.
The warning is clear.If we let algorithms and companies dictate what we watch, then we’ll all end up watching the same bland, homogenized, ‘popular’ titles. Instead, perhaps it’s better to do the work, to find outlets you trust, to read articles and forums, to dig into the director’s previous films. You could start finding a lot better movies outside the ‘Top 10.’
