4 ms·

I 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."

I 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 ago
I 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 ago
We 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 ago
  It'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.

mbostleman 4y ago

I 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 ago

We 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 ago
It'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.