Netflix: The Content Machine That May Be Destroying Quality

But financial success does not automatically mean product quality.

In 2025, Netflix generated $45.18 billion in revenue, compared with $39.00 billion in 2024. Net income reached $10.98 billion, operating income $13.33 billion, and operating margin 29.5%.

These are exceptional numbers.

And precisely because Netflix is such a powerful company, it deserves to be judged more critically.

The real question is not whether Netflix is profitable.

It obviously is.

The real question is:

How much real value does the subscriber receive for the money paid?

And that answer is considerably less impressive.

$45 billion in revenue. Where does the money go?

Netflix has transformed content into a gigantic industrial machine.

In 2025, its cost of revenues was approximately $23.3 billion, with content amortization representing the largest component, alongside production and licensing costs, talent, music rights, distribution and other expenses.

Netflix also had approximately $24 billion in content-related contractual obligations at the end of 2025.

The company expected to spend around $18 billion in cash on content during 2025.

Think about that number.

$18 billion.

The obvious question is:

Does spending more necessarily mean producing better entertainment?

No.

And that is the central contradiction in the Netflix model.

Netflix has developed an extraordinary industrial capacity to produce, acquire, distribute and promote content.

But industrial-scale production creates an unavoidable problem:

when you have to constantly feed a global platform serving hundreds of millions of subscribers, quantity becomes a strategic variable.

And when quantity becomes strategic, quality can become secondary.

The great illusion: more content = more value

Every week:

New series.

New movies.

New reality shows.

New thrillers.

New comedies.

New Korean productions.

Spanish productions.

Mexican productions.

Turkish productions.

Brazilian productions.

Indian productions.

Italian productions.

Nordic productions.

And so on.

At first glance, it looks like an extraordinary choice.

But ask yourself:

How many of these titles would I actually want to watch if the algorithm wasn’t constantly putting them in front of me?

That is where content proliferation becomes a problem.

Netflix doesn’t simply sell movies and television series.

It also sells the feeling that there is always something to watch.

Those are two very different things.

The Netflix paradox

Netflix can spend billions on content while simultaneously increasing the amount of mediocre content available.

There is no financial contradiction here.

It is a consequence of the business model.

Netflix serves a global audience with enormously different cultural backgrounds, levels of education, tastes and attention spans.

The platform therefore has a powerful incentive to favor content that is:

• immediately understandable;

• emotionally accessible;

• easy to consume;

• highly bingeable;

• built around cliffhangers;

• culturally exportable;

• algorithmically predictable.

This creates something bigger than Netflix itself:

The globalization of entertainment taste.

The danger is that Netflix isn’t simply giving audiences what they want.

It may increasingly be teaching audiences to want what Netflix knows how to produce and distribute efficiently.

That distinction matters.

The Latin American question

This is where the discussion becomes uncomfortable.

Netflix has invested heavily in Latin America and has successfully developed local productions capable of becoming global hits.

But saying that Netflix produces for an “ignorant Latin American audience” would be both intellectually weak and impossible to substantiate.

The stronger argument is this:

Netflix is increasingly optimizing part of its global catalogue for the lowest common denominator of mass entertainment.

And Latin America is one of the markets where this strategy is particularly visible.

But it is not exclusively a Latin American phenomenon.

It happens in the United States.

In Europe.

In Asia.

Everywhere.

The underlying issue is not nationality.

It is mass-market optimization.

The Content Glut Theory

I would call this:

The Netflix Content Glut Theory

The logic is simple.

More subscribers require more engagement.

More engagement requires a constant flow of new content.

New content competes with thousands of existing titles.

Individual titles therefore have shorter commercial lives.

Shorter commercial lives create pressure to produce even more content.

So the cycle becomes:

More content → more internal competition → less attention per title → shorter content lifespan → pressure for more releases → even more content.

Eventually, the catalogue itself becomes noise.

Netflix’s problem may not be a lack of content.

It may be too much content.

The algorithm problem

Netflix has one of the most powerful data systems in entertainment.

It knows what we watch.

When we stop.

When we resume.

Which episodes we finish.

Which ones we abandon.

Which actors perform.

Which genres perform.

In which countries.

At what time.

For how long.

This is technologically brilliant.

But it creates a fundamental problem.

Algorithms optimize what can be measured.

Artistic depth is not always measurable.

A slow, difficult, ambiguous or intellectually demanding film may initially generate weaker engagement than a formulaic thriller.

Yet it could become a masterpiece.

The algorithm naturally prefers immediate signals:

Click.

Retention.

Completion.

Engagement.

And this creates a risk that entertainment becomes increasingly engineered around metrics rather than artistic ambition.

Netflix vs. Apple TV+

This is where the difference becomes particularly interesting.

Apple TV+ has historically followed a much more selective strategy.

It does not need to have the biggest catalogue.

It needs to create premium, distinctive titles.

Series such as Severance, Slow Horses, Silo and Ted Lasso represent a fundamentally different positioning from an endless stream of disposable productions.

Apple can build a premium brand around fewer titles.

Netflix has to feed a global content machine.

One strategy emphasizes scarcity.
The other emphasizes abundance.

Netflix vs. Disney+

Disney has another enormous advantage:

intellectual property.

Disney.

Pixar.

Marvel.

Star Wars.

National Geographic.

Hulu.

Disney does not have to invent an entirely new reason for consumers to watch every month.

It owns decades of cultural capital.

Netflix has to continuously create or acquire new reasons to remain relevant.

And this creates an interesting irony.

Netflix built its identity around original content, yet licensed content produced by other studios can sometimes become extremely valuable to the platform.

The lesson is obvious:

Netflix’s greatest strength may not always be what Netflix produces.

Sometimes it is what Netflix manages to distribute.

Netflix vs. Prime Video

Prime Video operates under a completely different economic structure.

Amazon doesn’t necessarily need video to stand alone as an entertainment subscription.

Prime is an ecosystem:

Shopping.

Delivery.

Video.

Music.

Other services.

Video can reinforce the entire Amazon ecosystem.

Netflix doesn’t have that luxury.

Entertainment is essentially the product.

Therefore, the content has to continuously justify the subscription.

The uncomfortable truth: Netflix is too good at making money

This is the counterintuitive part.

Despite all these criticisms, Netflix remains a formidable financial machine.

In 2025:

Revenue: $45.18 billion
Operating income: $13.33 billion
Net income: $10.98 billion
Operating margin: 29.5%
Operating cash flow: $10.15 billion

Netflix is not a company in trouble.

Quite the opposite.

Netflix is doing exactly what the financial markets want it to do.

But what is excellent for shareholders does not necessarily equal what is excellent for viewers.

So, is Netflix worth subscribing to?

My answer: not permanently.

Not because Netflix has no excellent content.

It does.

The problem is the relationship between:

subscription cost + time wasted searching + enormous quantities of mediocre content + declining average quality.

If Netflix releases a series I genuinely want to watch, I can subscribe for one month.

Watch it.

Finish it.

Cancel.

That is, in my opinion, a much more rational strategy than automatically maintaining the subscription for twelve months.

The real revolution may be cancelling Netflix

For years, the question was:

“Which streaming platform should I subscribe to?”

The better question today is:

“Which platform has something worth watching this month?”

There may no longer be a platform that deserves your money permanently.

There is simply a temporary portfolio of content.

One month Netflix.

Then Apple TV+.

Then Disney+.

Then Prime Video.

Then perhaps nothing.

Because not watching anything can sometimes be a better choice than spending an hour scrolling through an enormous catalogue looking for something mediocre.

My conclusion

Netflix transformed television into a global, scalable and extraordinarily profitable industry.

But it also helped create a new form of inflation:

Content inflation.

More series.

More movies.

More productions.

More languages.

More countries.

More titles.

More algorithms.

More recommendations.

And yet, paradoxically, not necessarily more memorable entertainment.

The problem isn’t simply that Netflix produces too much.

The problem is that quantity has become part of the product.

And when quantity becomes a KPI, quality risks becoming the exception.

Netflix isn’t necessarily making audiences less intelligent.

Something more sophisticated may be happening:

It is industrializing taste.

And perhaps that is the real question we should be asking.

Not:

“How many shows are on Netflix?”

But:

“How many of them are genuinely worth our time?”

For me, today, the answer is low enough to make a permanent Netflix subscription hard to justify.

Netflix is an excellent company.
That doesn’t necessarily make it an excellent product.

And that distinction has become increasingly important.