Why is the UI of big streaming sites so horrible?

There doesn't seem to be a UI that I don't dislike at least a little bit, and so many of them seem to repeat each other's problems.

  • Netflix - (The least offender) Given how many things I"ve rated, you show me the same dozen things on upwards of 3 or 4 lists.
  • Hulu - I watch an episode of a show once, a year ago, and it is forever at the top of the 'Shows You Watch' - yet a show I've watched every episode of begins its new season, and the show is buried for me to hunt and find. I watch Daily Show every-single-day it is on, yet it's never on the 1st page of 'shows I watch'.
  • SyfyNow - When I click 'Faceoff - Full Episodes' - I would expect to get the page that offers me the Full Episodes of the show I want, and not some amorphous mix of information about the show, a hundred clips, and have to click another link to ACTUALLY get to Full Episodes.
  • Sony - I own Playstation Plus.. stop trying to sell it to me. Let me manipulate the icons on your damn system.. let me remove the services I'm never ever ever going to use.
  • Amazon Prime - ...you are the king of bad UI... You break up a show into Seasons? So to go from Season 2 to Season 3 of a show, I have to hunt and peck through an endless labyrinth of squares to find it?

I know i've seen a lot of people complain about each one of these individually... which makes me so confused as to how it is such a universal problem. I'd believe that with Syfy and Hulu, that they intentionally make their online system difficult to push you back to watching box tv... but Amazon? Come on! You are trying to compete with Netflix for fucksake. Can someone help me understand how in this time of amazing connectivity and huge amounts of entertainment at our finger tips, the services that provide them can't seem to organize their data in a friendly and pleasing way? Am I missing so me sales perspective?

/r/AskReddit Thread