I wonder if this is intentional? As in, if they can delay a user an average of X minutes per viewing session, they save? Or perhaps more realistically, have they determined that the terrible recommendations do work for some metric?
It's not like they can be blind to the problem, right? Or perhaps they are lacking content for people like us?
While this makes a good narrative (and as someone who is fed up with laying down to get comfortable just to have to get up 3 minutes later to confirm I'm still watching Futurama again it's easy to imagine), I suspect it's less sinister than this. If anything I'd suspect it's more likely that they're trying to boost, or give a final effort, towards certain things. I'm sure viewing numbers play into their contract negotiations so if something isn't doing well it's an indication they need to ditch it or an indication they over-paid. So I wonder if instead of it being them trying to delay you watching something it's just them really hoping you'll eventually decide to watch it.
It's not like they can be blind to the problem, right? Or perhaps they are lacking content for people like us?