Variety:

Netflix is taking a page from social networks with a new feature that will let users watch TV and movie previews in vertical-video orientation on their mobile phones.

The 30-second mobile previews are presented in a slideshow format with circular thumbnails, very much like the presentation of Snapchat and Instagram Stories. As with the popular “stories" video format, users can tap the screen to play the preview or swipe to advance to the next preview. If you see something you like, you can add it to your watchlist directly from the video screen.

The mobile previews are available starting Thursday in Netflix’s iOS app, and will be “coming soon to Android,“ the company said.

The point? It’s another addition to Netflix’s content-discovery toolkit, designed to suck viewers into the Netflix programming catalog. Astutely, Netflix is adopting the concept of swipe-able, vertical videos, which presumably many people already know how to interact with.

Goddamnit.

I recognize I’m going full “Old Man Yells At Cloud” here, but seriously gang - taking horizontal content and reformatting it to a vertical format for engagement and discovery purposes sure is frustrating. At least when you go to watch the content, it’s as intended, but…for how long?

It’s almost as egregious as HBO using the wrong aspect ratio to “fill your screen”.

We can do better, guys. Original format or nothing.