Problem 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...
"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.
I 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.
What is isn't going to do is make Netflix a partner to something really out there, like Blaze TV.
This entire change to their guidelines feels dishoenst. They paint it as their duty to encourage pluralism, but they in fact just want to platform just enough content on the sidelines to make off with the largest profit profit margins.
It's another surrender to the power of the almighty dollar. I'd much prefer if Netflix was smaller and other competitors were around to fill that hole in the market so I could, as they say, vote with my wallet. (That phrase is never a dismissive sham, I swear!)
Fair 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.
I 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.
I 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.
Sidebar, but the "Cuties debacle" is nothing more than a moral panic. Cuties is a great movie about an immigrant kid struggling to cope with a broken home by escaping her parents and becoming a "normal French girl." She doesn't know how to fit in so she tries to gain acceptance with her non-immigrant school-friends by hyper-sexualizing herself. The story a searing criticism of the sexualization of children, not a celebration it. The dancing scene that everyone complains about is deliberately constructed to disgust the viewer, not to titillate them: you're meant to see it as the protagonist's lowest point, when they realize that they are pretending to be someone they're not in a bid to escape her parents' marital trauma. People got upset about it without seeing the movie. It's a great movie.
I 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.
Funny - I find Netflix content keeps getting better. Dark, Ozark, Unorthodox, Russian Doll, Sense8, Love Sex & Robots, The OA.
Not as good as HBO - but honestly it seems close. If anything - HBO's content seems to be on the decline more than Netflix. It's still top notch, but it used to be outstanding.
Netflix is really mastering the wide appeal & good enough content: 13 Reasons Why, Elite, Bridgerton, Bird Box, etc...
It seems like the shows everyone is talking about are always either HBO or Netflix.
Disney is obviously dominating in popularity at the box office with Marvel.
I canceled over the recent price hike, but I think happened was that Netflix got too good analytics, so while their scripts all hit the good points, it feels very bland.
Then of course the classic stuff they use is classic because it is good, so the average will go down as they no longer have access to it.
I noticed a sharp decline in quality when Netflix started with their own original content, some of it was good but most of it was mass produced low quality trash.
But it also an inherit problem with any movie streaming service that wants to have fresh content, you have to fill the content bucket with something and mass produced low quality stuff is both cheaper and faster to produce.
FWIW 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.”
They will of course, and I think few people actually have a problem with the general principle of shying away from controversial content if you drill into the specifics. For instance, I think fairly few would be surprised or offended at Netflix refusing to stream Triumph of the Will.
Major 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.
So 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+.
It'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.
I 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.
What 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.
Getting 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...
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.
I 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.
[+] [-] rossdavidh|3 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] chmod600|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] linspace|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sascha_sl|3 years ago|reply
This entire change to their guidelines feels dishoenst. They paint it as their duty to encourage pluralism, but they in fact just want to platform just enough content on the sidelines to make off with the largest profit profit margins.
It's another surrender to the power of the almighty dollar. I'd much prefer if Netflix was smaller and other competitors were around to fill that hole in the market so I could, as they say, vote with my wallet. (That phrase is never a dismissive sham, I swear!)
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wly_cdgr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manicdee|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joemazerino|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ambrozk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicolas_t|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|3 years ago|reply
Not as good as HBO - but honestly it seems close. If anything - HBO's content seems to be on the decline more than Netflix. It's still top notch, but it used to be outstanding.
Netflix is really mastering the wide appeal & good enough content: 13 Reasons Why, Elite, Bridgerton, Bird Box, etc...
It seems like the shows everyone is talking about are always either HBO or Netflix.
Disney is obviously dominating in popularity at the box office with Marvel.
[+] [-] ratsmack|3 years ago|reply
This is the same trajectory that Disney is taking. They are losing subscribers also as people are becoming tired of the agenda driven content.
[+] [-] tomjen3|3 years ago|reply
Then of course the classic stuff they use is classic because it is good, so the average will go down as they no longer have access to it.
[+] [-] adharmad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tored|3 years ago|reply
But it also an inherit problem with any movie streaming service that wants to have fresh content, you have to fill the content bucket with something and mass produced low quality stuff is both cheaper and faster to produce.
[+] [-] dannyphantom|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oblib|3 years ago|reply
“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-all...
[+] [-] agilob|3 years ago|reply
Someone will be doing layoffs soon and want people to leave voluntarily
[+] [-] zxcvbn4038|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akmarinov|3 years ago|reply
Google and Microsoft are probably raking in top talent at bargain prices right now.
[+] [-] diebeforei485|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robonerd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0des|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akmarinov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elcomet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freebuju|3 years ago|reply
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-m...
[+] [-] goplayoutside|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|3 years ago|reply
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+.
[+] [-] 0des|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walkhour|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] justinzollars|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulcole|3 years ago|reply
This is a funny take on it. Of course Netflix censors specific artists and voices by choosing to just not produce their content.
[+] [-] robonerd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BonoboIO|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] kif|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcooliv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peanut_worm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blindmute|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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