53 ms·
Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit
- goplayoutside 4y agohttps://archive.ph/c9uzb https://archive.ph/c9uzb
- jleyank 4y ago"Hey, offending people sells and we're in it for the money...". If this bothers you, chant "we're in it for the money" until it doesn't. If it still bothers you, get outta here.
- SheinhardtWigCo 4y agoWell, yes, this is a much needed clarification for the people working there who think edgy comedy is despicable. Now they know they have the option not to work at an edgy comedy factory, instead of posting about it on Twitter and taking a day off to protest on Twitter.
- qgin 4y agoI think what they’re saying is that the caution needed to avoid offending anyone would be too much of a handicap in the goal of making content that people like. I know there are specific examples where a person could say “so THIS couldn’t have been avoided?” But as a general policy, they’re saying that they’re going draw their line for what’s acceptable at a place that isn’t intentionally trying to offend, but is sometimes going to end up letting something through that does.
- 0des 4y agoWhy are they surprised when the org begins to resemble the content? When Netflix sells outrage, why are they shocked when they cultivate internal outrage?
- qgin 4y ago99.9% of Netflix content isn’t outrageous in any way. There’s a lot of attention for letting famous comedians do their usual routines in a recorded special, but we’re talking about less than 10 hours of television in a library of like 20,000 hours of Netflix originals.
- celdon25 4y ago> 99.9% of Netflix content isn’t outrageous in any way. You could say that's only because it has become the new norm. The Simpsons was considered to be controversial at first.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoAnd then came Family Guy, making the Simpsons seem like pretty mellow family fare in comparison.
- robonerd 4y ago'Was', heh. Bart makes delinquency look cool and in the 90s I personally saw a fair few young boys my own age emulating Bart and getting into trouble for it. I think the Simpsons is appropriate for teenagers, but not much younger.
- carlivar 4y agoSo basically the newspaper industry for the past century or so, too?
- dahart 4y agoDisney offends some people (seriously, as an ex-employee, I was astounded the degree to which some supposedly adult people insisted on being offended by cartoons made for children.) Facebook actually has a business model based on encouraging people to offend each other and make money off everyone standing around to watch, where Netflix does nothing even remotely close. Fox News literally manufactures offenses on a daily basis and encourages people to be offended. Netflix is so completely bland and generally inoffensive compared to so many other things out there, it seems funny to me to call it out and point fingers at Netflix as some kind of example.
- ALittleLight 4y agoI find the idea that you shouldn't offend people odd and pretty recent. For example, when I was growing up, my mother would say "We have a G rated household." Meaning: in our household we could not watch any movies or TV shows that would not be rated G. As you might imagine, Netflix hosts lots of content that my parents would find offensive. Likewise, religious people might find pro-atheist content on Netflix offensive, anti-porn people offended by Netflix's borderline softcore pornography, political groups might be offended by various documentaries, and so on. You really cannot hold a diverse selection of content and avoid offending people. Why is avoiding offending people now supposed to be important for Netflix?
- mbostleman 4y agoI don't think that offending people is truly the first principle. If that were the case there would be zero content. The attempt is to not be offensive to the specific sensitivities a specific group that is vocal in popular culture and that supposedly has the power to take down your brand. It would be interesting to see if that group really has power if all companies would stand up against them instead of folding.
- johntb86 4y agoWe used to have the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority and relatively universal radio/tv enforcement of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words, so there was a time (the 30s-60s) when the impulse was to censor everything to the lowest common denominator. It's not that recent a phenomenon.
- HWR_14 4y agoIt's worth noticing that the FCC regulations were aimed at broadcasts when children were up (6am-10pm), in an effort to protect kids, not adults. Also, those regulations existed on the limited resource of public airwaves. There is no reason you couldn't start the Hardcore Porn Cable Network other than it would flop. There is no reason to use time-based filtering anymore, so making non-G rated content available 24/7 is no longer an issue.
- joemazerino 4y agoI cancelled my Netflix account after the whole Cuties debacle. While visiting my friends I have noticed that Netflix content quality has been dropping sharply the last few years. Let's hope this exodus of customers and content creators will create a new, more interesting industry for the future.
- adharmad 4y agoSame here. The 365 days movie was quite atrocious and borderline porn.
- nicolas_t 4y agoI actually think that Cuties was widely mischaracterised as a movie by people who didn't watch it and just reacted to what they thought the content of the movie was. It's actually a good thoughtful coming of age movie that talks about important topics and actually criticises the culture of hypersexualisation of young girls.
- _gabe_ 4y agoI respectfully disagree. I haven't seen cuties, but I just watched the trailer. The movie may be a good thoughtful coming of age movie, but the trailer (at least in my opinion) did not characterize that at all. If I watch a trailer and it seems to indicate a movie that's about the sexualization of very young girls, I think it's perfectly fine for me to cancel my subscription without watching the movie. You may disagree with that sentiment, and that's fine, but I think that many people who did not watch the movie had seen the trailer and had a similar reaction that I just had.
- aftbit 4y agoI'm not sure you're disagreeing. It seems more like you are proving the parent post's point. You didn't watch the movie, yet you had an emotional reaction to it anyway, and used that to make a decision about the service. The parent isn't saying that's unethical or anything, just that the movie is being mischaracterized by people who did not watch it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- diebeforei485 4y agoThey shouldn't shy away from controversial content for fear of offending people.
- 0des 4y agoTheir core demographic is offended though.
- rajup 4y agoIs it? If this easily offended demographic were really so big the execs at Netflix are not so stupid to alienate them. The more mundane reason is this demographic is very tiny though they may be very vocal.
- KerrAvon 4y agoIt’s vocal, for sure, but it’s not that tiny. You can’t simply dismiss the concerns of 10-30% (+ allies) of your potential audience.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoYou can if it undermines and alienates the other 90-70%. I'm not suggesting Nf should. But one persons offended is another's appealing. The volume of a voice is independent of its depth & breadth.
- 1over137 4y agoWho is this 10-30%? There aren't that many trans people. Who are you referring to?
- datalopers 4y agoI'm not offended by their content, I just think the quality declined faster than they've raised prices. That's why I cancelled. Most of their original content is about as exciting and predictable as talking to a GPT-3 bot.
- marcooliv 4y agoFinally.
- StopDarkPattern 4y ago
- heartbreak 4y agoWhat acronym?
- agilob 4y ago> if you don’t like that, you can quit. Someone will be doing layoffs soon and want people to leave voluntarily
- akmarinov 4y agoThis + their hiring freeze and also Meta and Twitter freezing hiring, along with people displeased with Apple’s remote work policy. Google and Microsoft are probably raking in top talent at bargain prices right now.
- Beldin 4y agoBecause top talent has no clue what Google or MS would/should value them at? I don't think the brains of top talent stop working when they are unhappy with certain aspects of their current job. Also not with respect to their total compensation.
- zxcvbn4038 4y agoMore like they don’t want to waste their time on managing lot of prima-donnas.
- rajup 4y agoAn excellent business decision.
- rossdavidh 4y agoQuite possibly, but if you had a labor shortage you would waste your time managing the prima-donnas for lack of alternatives. If you're about to do layoffs anyway, no need.
- charlesju 4y agoThis is not true. People that are not aligned with the company's values create negative enterprise value.
- 4y ago
- paulcole 4y ago> We let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices This is a funny take on it. Of course Netflix censors specific artists and voices by choosing to just not produce their content.
- LatteLazy 4y agoGetting censored because we think there is no demand is very different to getting censored because 1 person at the company doesn't like your work or opinions or something...
- robonerd 4y agoIt's the difference between being the censor, and being the censored. Both sides in the dispute want to be the censor, neither wants to be the censored.
- robonerd 4y agoWhat they mean is they want the selection of content to be done by the people specifically hired and empowered to select content, using the official channels created specifically for this selection process. What they don't want is mobs of workers lower on the totem pole trying to impose their will on management through walkouts/etc.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoI broadly agree that some people, mostly on more extreme ends of the political spectrum, are trying to censor views they disagree with in a way that is potentially dangerous for a free society. However, I strongly believe that every employee of a company (and every shareholder) carries a small amount of the moral culpability for their company's actions. To purposefully choose an extreme example, would you be willing to help develop spyware for Russia to hack into phones and surreptitiously monitor communications, if your company asked you to do it? One of the most fundamental problems in society right now is that we've decided corporations should be exempt from any kind of ethical standards. A corporation's responsibility is to make as much money as possible, we say. If it makes money, we can't expect them to do anything else. Corporations, of course, are imaginary constructs which cannot truly be responsible for anything. Luckily, they are staffed by people, who should have just as much of a moral compass as any other human being. Your moral compass should not evaporate the moment you walk through the company door.
- 0des 4y agoThis is what being placated feels like. They're only interested in a very one-sided depiction of "diversity".
- wly_cdgr 4y agoFair enough. Seems pretty reasonable to expect your employees to be willing to work on what you ask them to work on, given that you're paying them and they voluntarily signed up to work for you. And as people who were able to get a job at Netflix, they surely had other options.
- manicdee 4y agoI don’t think it’s fair or reasonable to hire someone to help produce documentaries and then expect them to produce “ow my balls”. I don’t think it’s fair or reasonable to hire someone to produce web sites in Flask/Vuex and then expect them to dedicate themselves to maintaining your PHP legacy systems.
- wly_cdgr 4y agoAre those things that specific people were actually promised in an explicit, demonstrable way when they were hired? It sounds like the kind of thing that people like to convince themselves they were promised because that's what they hoped and wanted to be true Also, there's nothing in the article about this? - all the article talks about is some Netflix employees being upset that management didn't obey their wishes and pull Chapelle's special.
- chasd00 4y agoI can’t think of anything worse for a company like Netflix than the woke crowd coming for them. Isn’t every horror movie filled with violent hate and evil?
- frr149 4y agoThe woke horde is already inside Netflix and running the show.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rajin444 4y agoIt’s not about bad tactics it’s about bad targets.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoMeanwhile, the long standing normalized usual suspects (e.g., the Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street, poverty, etc.) get a free pass? And the proud woke believe Netflix is an evil worth expending energy on? Talk about doing the usual suspects a favor. If anyone wants to exercise their consumer-ness and cancel their Netflix subscription, they should. But cancel culturing Netflix while real issues continue to run free and unchallenged undermines "woke" in the eyes of anyone reasonable. Note: This isn't a knock on the idea of woke, or even cancel culture. It's about priorities.
- okareaman 4y agoI can't help but feel this is aimed at trans activists who protested the Chappelle special. I think he went too far at a couple places, but that's what comedians do. I don't think it's transphobic to push back on trans activists. I have problematic issues (bipolar, recovering alcoholic) but I don't go around demanding the world accommodate me and calling people who won't listen to me haters.
- cato_the_elder 4y ago
- bin_bash 4y agopropaganda for which side?
- squintychino 4y agoClearly it's propaganda for the non-trans majority that are not comfortable with trans people. Just like trans people came up with their 'cis people' propaganda to deal with their uncomfortableness with non-trans people. An eye for an eye makes the world blind...
- sdenton4 4y agoHow would you feel about your first statement of the word 'trans' were replaced with Black, gay, Catholic or really any other protected class?
- weepit 4y agoThere's no real comparison to any of those categories. It's more like: white people claiming to be black, straight people saying they're gay, or Muslims identifying as Catholics. Transgender is just people desiring to be what they are not, and can never be. But we're all supposed to accept their wishful thinking as truth.
- justinzollars 4y agoI now know, that if I lived in Ancient Rome I wouldn't have been wind swept by Christianity and converted, or If I lived in Salem I wouldn't have hunted witches. This is a religion we are dealing with. A mob and a stupid time in history to live. Netflix pays very well, you shouldn't need to protest at work. Grow up.
- mgh2 4y agoAs if Netflix is not filled with woke propaganda already... Note: Expect sentiment downvotes in HN
- andrei_says_ 4y agoSome examples? And could you please define “woke propaganda”? Asking because the term is used to mischaracterize a broad range of views by, ironically, large scale propaganda / fear mongering outlets.
- dimgl 4y agoHave you not seen their content lately? I wouldn't say it's woke propaganda, but a lot of their content is clearly trying to tick the diversity boxes.
- whymauri 4y agoIt's a global company -- they need to make and provide content to a global audience.
- mgh2 4y agoHow about providing unbiased content that show both sides? Shows like Netflix's "Midnight Mass" and "Messiah" (questions on faith) or HBO max's "The Staircase" (objective & subjective truth) are the minority.
- mgh2 4y agoSnowpiercer (series): Gave up after the main plot focused on maintaining a lie, not discovering a truth (conventional screenwriting). Other examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/pwp3t4/im_tired_of_woke/ https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/pwp3t4/im_tired_of... Eventually got tired of Netflix's money cow strategy by sacrificing quality - buying original ideas and ruining them with more seasons for the sake of engagement: Designated Survivor, Money Heist, etc. Piggybacking on categories that rate higher on IMDB: Korean copycats, cheap documentaries, reality shows. They know how to cater to public sentiment because biased reviews lead to higher ratings, hoping the brainwashing is not apparent - recent drop in subscribers proves them wrong.
- rossdavidh 4y agoProblem for not only Netflix, but any other mammoth media company that wants to appeal to >50% of the population: you can't exclude half the political spectrum (either half). In the last part of the 20th century, the utterly drab and lackluster Three-Letter Networks were drab and lackluster in part because they were trying to avoid offending as large a portion of the population as possible. But, with way more than 3 networks competing now, you can't be drab and get anyone's attention. Which means either you have content that's offensive to lots of people, and hope that it is offset by other content that appeals to those people, or you shrink down to a niche provider that appeals only to a much smaller portion of the population. The third factor is that many companies cannot get financing or keep up their share prices unless they can pretend they will be as big as Facebook, so just existing in your little niche may not work well either. Unstoppable force meets immovable objects...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- linspace 4y agoI think the quality of content is not related to whether is for or against some part of the population. As a matter of fact I find it quite dull and artificial when is so obsessively centered on some aspects like race or sexuality. It reminds me of Don Quixote: it's a masterpiece of literature but I find different parts of varying quality. Some parts are eternal and you can relate to the glories and miseries of people from 500 years ago. Other parts, like when Don Quixote starts to ramble about honor, what is honorable or not, and so on and on, are quite boring. Not because honor is not important, we have laws nowadays about defamation after all, but you cannot make it the center of your life. Making your content either offensive to some part of the population or making it all about some political agenda results in low quality content, IMHO.
- chmod600 4y ago"you can't exclude half the political spectrum (either half)" That is a changing dynamic. For one, the "halves" keep changing, sometimes it's more polarized and sometimes more moderate. And during a lot of the 2010's, it was perfectly viable to exclude the conservative "half". They just didn't push back much, at least when it came to spending. But now things are changing. In Florida, Disney World may be losing their special political status due to Disney's political posturing. That would have been unthinkable 5 years ago. Now, as you say, large companies have to worry about alienating anyone. Whether this will cause further fracturing, or we go back to "drab and boring", I don't know. There's also a young/old dynamic. Some companies feel safe appealing to young people, who they perceive as progressive. That may work, but young people are also unpredictable, so it's not necessarily a good long-term strategy.
- AlwaysRock 4y agoI don't really see how this is news. That is how companies work. Don't like what the company is doing? Leave... Any job is weighing the positives vs the bad.
- cletus 4y agoSo Activision-blizzard has been mired in controversy for several years now. Lawsuits, scandals, etc. A lot of content creators have quit producing content for their games and people wonder if Blizzard can recover. IMHO Blizzard is one good release away from people forgetting all these controversies. Netflix has thrown money at creating original content. If you look at some of their releases it's clear they've had more money than they know what to do with. Money will only take you so far. I agree they needed to do this. I disagree with how they've gone about it. This has forced them into price hikes. In their most profitable markets they're now losing subs. The share price is like 75% off its peak. How does this relate to Activision? Easy. If things were going well at Netflix (eg the share price was hitting new heights, sub numbers were up) I guarantee you no one would care about any of this. But things aren't going well and that foments dissent. So while employees may have legitimate complaints (and they do) the main story is that things aren't going well at Netflix and they may have overspent themselves into a really tough spot. I know I no longer perma-subscribe to Netflix. It's more expensive than HBO. I'll pay for 1-2 months a year to catch up and that's it. I fully expect Netflix to stem this kind of bleeding at some point by only having 6 month or annual subscriptions or those will be at the current price and the monthly price will be $20+.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zionic 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- otde 4y agoI guess I just can’t think of a better way to describe some of the stuff people say about trans people. It’s rooted in a deep hatred that warrants the suffix, IMO. I don’t think “disagreement” adequately describes the severity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- jrs235 4y agoIs it rooted in hatred or fear?
- otde 4y agoIt's pretty complicated! I'd say it's a little bit of a lot of things, and the amounts of those things depends on the person. There's some people who feel like they wish they could have transitioned but didn't, and direct a pretty intense resentment towards people they see as having undeserved happiness (the "rotten egg" theory). Some people believe in a strict natural "order" in the world that they see trans people as subverting in ways they see as disgusting. Some people are scared parents who believe trans people will indoctrinate their children and turn them into unrecognizable, traumatized, uncontrollable shells of their former selves through surgeries and hormone treatments. Shared amongst all these lines of thinking is an intense belief that the world would be a better place if the idea of being trans (and trans people in general) simply didn't exist, and that to move to that world, we should be detransitioned first, invisible second, and dead otherwise.
- zebop 4y agoThat's not how the term is normally expressed though. It's very often used to shut down disagreement or enquiry. Like for example, if someone asks, "how can this person be a woman if they have a penis?" These days, they'd get immediately accused of transphobia.
- kif 4y agoThis wasn't a good look on Netflix employees back then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMPp6kdXUek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMPp6kdXUek
- peanut_worm 4y agoNetflix feels like the discount dvd bin at walmart now. Hulu seems like a much better option these days.
- oblib 4y agoFWIW Daphne's sister Becky said “Dave was the biggest bright spot for Daphne” before her suicide. “Blaming Dave is beyond the wrong thing to do, “He helped her and let her be comfortable while talking with him. She had many demons; Dave Chappelle was NOT one of them.” Source: https://nypost.com/2021/10/11/dave-chappelle-is-an-lgbtq-ally-family-of-late-trans-comedian/ https://nypost.com/2021/10/11/dave-chappelle-is-an-lgbtq-all...
- freebuju 4y agoMajor studios give creative concessions to foreign markets like China in order to be allowed into their film market. It was incredibly naive of Netflix to think they were too big that they could ignore feedback and input from strong audience bases. You can't build a mass market product based on servicing the needs of a woke minority in a functional market. The market will quickly remind you of this mistake when you don't have any more investors pumping funds into the business. They need more than an ad-supported tier to come out of this. In the midst of a shaky market and lowest ever subscription numbers, they have no choice but to cater to all walks of audiences if they are to survive. And spend less on shows, I was seeing crazy budgets to the tune of $30M per episode[0] on the new upcoming season of Stranger Things. That's now bad for the bottom line. [0] https://decider.com/2022/04/21/stranger-things-season-4-30-million-dollars-per-episode/ https://decider.com/2022/04/21/stranger-things-season-4-30-m...
- walkhour 4y agoIt's somewhat surprising how quickly Netflix has given up on their "progressive"values, which probably they thought were the right path to making more money, as soon as they found out they can actually be detrimental to them. Now they have new values! Free speech, and they think they are a very serious topic that must be treaded carefully and thoughtfully. Because values are very important, not profit. But you can be sure that if showing 10 year olds in a bikini was profitable, and society wasn't shocked by this, we'd have some new made up value supporting doing so.
- blindmute 4y agoBased. The pendulum has begun its return swing
- RickJWagner 4y agoGood for Netflix. Coca-Cola, Disney and others have recently been reminded that businesses are there (wait for it....) to make money for their owners! Business should be professional and all about business. Politics belongs elsewhere.
- BonoboIO 4y agoI think the best years are over for Netflix. The hard awakening is here to make content that the users want and they are a movie/tv content company, not a „tech company“. Their Engineering Blog is great, some really great projects, but sometimes and even more and more there are projects that left me asking: „Why so complicated“ At scale everything is a problem, but some „solutions“ seem „well we have staff, money and time for nice funny stuff“ vibe. Like inventing batch jobs, but more complicated
- badwolf 4y ago
- weepit 4y ago