3 ms·

I think that's a bit unfair. Businesses go through business cycles. I never worked there, nor have insight (obviously) but you know the business climate chang

by mc32 4y ago

I think that's a bit unfair. Businesses go through business cycles. I never worked there, nor have insight (obviously) but you know the business climate changes, your competitors change and you have to adjust or experience consequences. Sometimes you need to grow subscriptions, sometimes you need to grow revenue, sometimes you have more flexibility, and sometimes less (Netflix has to re-enter agreements with content owners and creators and those can change and they have to adjust and also business changes). However, it seems people only envision greedy accountants and Executives rubbing hands at the prospect.

nscalf 4y ago
Once you go public you have no option other than to just grow at all costs. The cost of Netflix pushing growth is turning consumer sentiment against them by cracking down on account sharing and pushing ads into the service. Netflix had a gross profit of $12.44B in 2022. Why not preserve the large, successful business that consumers have a high opinion of instead of push for further profits? The truth is that Netflix could continue profiting billions per year more or less indefinitely without risking the company by shifting focus from growth, and the only people who would be upset about it would be shareholders. And the only reason they'd be upset is because of greed. They could stop trying to grow and be a strong dividend company overnight.
- mc32 4y ago
  It's not that simple. Their "greed" affords "those" investors the ability to invest those earnings in other up and comers --some of which may fail and some of which may succeed. If everyone was just happy with going an even course, at scale, the economy would stagnate.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    The stagnated economy means lots of popular services that consistently pull in large profits, and are well like by consumers, and which are careful not to screw over their users at every opportunity I'd be just fine with that.
- BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
  > Once you go public you have no option other than to just grow at all costs. Nothing grows forever, so in fact this "grow at all costs" mentality forces many otherwise healthy companies that could maintain a nice break-even with some dividend to pay into doing stupid short-term thinking and desperate financial engineering and then in time collapse and go into bankruptcy.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Sure, here's a typical business cycle these days: > First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. "Tiktok's enshittification", by Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

by mc32 4y ago

nscalf 4y ago

Once you go public you have no option other than to just grow at all costs. The cost of Netflix pushing growth is turning consumer sentiment against them by cracking down on account sharing and pushing ads into the service. Netflix had a gross profit of $12.44B in 2022. Why not preserve the large, successful business that consumers have a high opinion of instead of push for further profits? The truth is that Netflix could continue profiting billions per year more or less indefinitely without risking the company by shifting focus from growth, and the only people who would be upset about it would be shareholders. And the only reason they'd be upset is because of greed. They could stop trying to grow and be a strong dividend company overnight.

mc32 4y ago
It's not that simple. Their "greed" affords "those" investors the ability to invest those earnings in other up and comers --some of which may fail and some of which may succeed. If everyone was just happy with going an even course, at scale, the economy would stagnate.
- autoexec 4y ago
  The stagnated economy means lots of popular services that consistently pull in large profits, and are well like by consumers, and which are careful not to screw over their users at every opportunity I'd be just fine with that.
BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
> Once you go public you have no option other than to just grow at all costs. Nothing grows forever, so in fact this "grow at all costs" mentality forces many otherwise healthy companies that could maintain a nice break-even with some dividend to pay into doing stupid short-term thinking and desperate financial engineering and then in time collapse and go into bankruptcy.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Sure, here's a typical business cycle these days: > First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. "Tiktok's enshittification", by Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys