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> What niches would those be? I can't enumerate all niches that exist in a large back catalog of media. My point wasn't that HBO should cater to 1,000 differen

> What niches would those be? I can't enumerate all niches that exist in a large back catalog of media. My point wasn't that HBO should cater to 1,000 different "I wanna see the racist stuff" niches. Rather, there are a thousand different subsets of their subscriber base that all have an outsized interest in something otherwise obscure. Or largely unpopular. I was responding the to general point about the tradeoff between serving those small subsets vs. avoiding the ire of the wider subscriber base. > Why is HBO Max responsible for all of them I didn't say they were. Just reframing it as a business decision that they could make. The long tail is a thing that has been traditionally hard to cater to, but is easier with the technology we have today. (i.e. Physical video stores don't have 1/10th the floorspace that would be required, but online streaming does. Once a title has been tagged and categorized, you let your software take care of the curation with 0 marginal cost) > I don't even know why OP and yourself are going after HBO for this. I'm not "going after them". I was responding to the parent's comment with my own ideas how the situation could be navigated. If HBO decides that, no, they'd rather just sidestep the whole issue, I don't blame them! Their math might work out different than mine. (Okay, maybe I "blame" them, but I get it. Can't say I'd be Mr. Principled Archivist in the same situation) As for OP, I figure he really loves Tom and Jerry, and would love to see all the episodes. > Almost seems like a dog whistle if I had more evidence. No. The "I'm a sensible adult" is fine by me on its own merits. I don't need to whistle. Like I said, mark these episodes "TV-MA". I guess I'm frustrated because I wish streaming services weren't so ephemeral. The one that really got me was the episode of Community where the group played D&D for the first time. It's one of the best episodes of that show, but it's no longer available to watch. But it's reasonable for me—a non-bigot—to like that episode, right?

toyg 6y ago
Pulling the D&D episode can easily be ascribed to acrimony for Dan Harmon from both tv owners and politically-motivated mobs. A bunch of right-wing trolls repeatedly tried to “metoo” Harmon; when they eventually weaponized that episode, nobody at Sony was willing to stick their neck out for it - after all the trouble Dan put them through while making the series, he likely has no friends left over there. Chang’s makeup is such a layered gag, it’s ridiculous that it gets dropped in the same basket as Mommy Two-Shoes.
aranelsurion 6y ago
About the D&D episode, if you watch the series on Netflix it's not just blocked or greyed out, but is simply wiped out of existence. They even renumbered the season, so there's absolutely no way for an unsuspecting viewer to know, they're simply robbed of having that choice. I myself learned about its existence long after I was done with the season, by coincidence. In my opinion this kind of re-writing is the worst, since the platform is not only making a decision to not serve you the content, but also actively making the decision to keep this information from you. I miss the good ol' days of "just click the X button on the top-right corner" way of content filtering.

toyg 6y ago

Pulling the D&D episode can easily be ascribed to acrimony for Dan Harmon from both tv owners and politically-motivated mobs. A bunch of right-wing trolls repeatedly tried to “metoo” Harmon; when they eventually weaponized that episode, nobody at Sony was willing to stick their neck out for it - after all the trouble Dan put them through while making the series, he likely has no friends left over there. Chang’s makeup is such a layered gag, it’s ridiculous that it gets dropped in the same basket as Mommy Two-Shoes.

aranelsurion 6y ago

About the D&D episode, if you watch the series on Netflix it's not just blocked or greyed out, but is simply wiped out of existence. They even renumbered the season, so there's absolutely no way for an unsuspecting viewer to know, they're simply robbed of having that choice. I myself learned about its existence long after I was done with the season, by coincidence. In my opinion this kind of re-writing is the worst, since the platform is not only making a decision to not serve you the content, but also actively making the decision to keep this information from you. I miss the good ol' days of "just click the X button on the top-right corner" way of content filtering.