When it comes to ratings, Netflix treats the public and many of its business partners like the characters in “Bird Box” — blindfolded and left to feel their way through the dark, except for a rare glimpse of light.

Secrecy is a charge often leveled at Netflix. In Hollywood, where TV ratings and box-office stats are the lifeblood of business, the streaming entertainment titan plays by its own rules, keeping its viewer statistics out of sight and making it difficult for outsiders to measure the success of its shows.

Recently, though, Netflix has publicly revealed some fuzzy performance figures for a handful of projects, among them the former Lifetime series “You,” the Spanish-language teen drama “Elite” and most prominently the science fiction thriller “Bird Box,” which the company said had been seen by more than 45 million accounts in its first week. But these are the exceptions. Viewership for Netflix’s hundreds of other original series and movies remain corporate secrets.

As Netflix continues to grow, this game of peekaboo has become increasingly irksome to other studios as well as talent agencies, some of which feel that Netflix’s lack of transparency gives it an unfair competitive advantage.

Despite pressure on Netflix to disclose more data, experts say Netflix has little motivation to be more open, in part because it doesn’t answer to advertisers who would normally demand such information.

“Netflix frankly doesn’t have to tell anybody anything about the viewing of any of their stuff because they don’t have to,” says Tim Hanlon, chief executive of the Chicago-based media advisory and investment firm the Vertere Group.

Netflix also faces rising costs associated with content licensed from other studios, and disclosing ratings on popular shows would likely lead to even higher licensing fees.

Older favorites like “Friends,” “The Office” and “Breaking Bad” are major draws for Netflix subscribers and continue to bring in big business. Netflix recently paid more than $100 million to Warner Bros. to retain the exclusive streaming rights to “Friends” for an additional year, more than three times what it had previously paid.

“Releasing data would make things worse for Netflix. It needs to protect the data so it can negotiate better deals,” says another industry analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a previous working relationship with the company. “For them, to use and own their data is a religion.”

Netflix declined to comment for this story. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company uses the viewing habits collected from its 139 million subscribers worldwide to make viewing recommendations in the Netflix app, often steering viewers to its own original content.

It also scours data to make cancellation and renewal decisions.

“Every quarter we look at the trends,” Netflix’s outgoing Chief Financial Officer David Wells said in a 2017 earnings call. “For us, [it] is about the sort of continuity of viewing over the life of the show.”

Companies that license shows to Netflix receive basic viewership data, but executives say the information isn’t useful.

“We get a compilation of views by season, so it’s not divided out by episode, and there’s no indication of what a view even means — like how long the duration,” says one network executive who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. “From an analysis standpoint, it’s meaningless.”

Netflix also declines to provide stats on how its other offerings perform, making comparisons impossible.

“There is no context to it. You only know about your (own programs),” says another TV executive who has done business with Netflix. The executive says Netflix doesn’t provide any demographic information about viewers.