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A suggestion: have some description of your content somewhere. At least logged out, I can barely see more than the episode title, I have no idea what any of the shows are about.
In any way, I (white) think this sounds like a great idea, congrats on the launch and good luck.
I can't help but feel like everyone commenting here read the headline, brushed straight past the lengthy explanation and went directly to outrage in the comment box. This is a streaming service set up to elevate content by black creators, to make up for the fact that the mainstream media under-represents those people. I'm struggling to see the outrage on a cultural level and on a startup level I can absolutely imagin…
This is most comments on HN.
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>And imagine the outrage if someone had made “X for white people”. There’d be riots in streets. The idea is that "X" is de facto "X for white people" in America. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's the argument.
Thanks for the constructive reply. I wasn’t aware of such default assumptions. I still thinks it sounds like nonsense, but at least it explains the massive downvotes Im getting :D It must be hard to live in a country where everyone is so obsessed with race, yet supposedly also how it “is not important”. To me that seems like a massive contradiction.
Perhaps you should put some effort into self-education and understand the context of race and racism in America before making qualitative statements about things you seem to not even grasp the basics of.
Here's an idea - Build a tool that helps users discover black content on the internet rather than furthering the divide by building a racially segregated platform.
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Seconding this. And imagine the outrage if someone had made “X for white people”. There’d be riots in streets. The bizarreness and racist double standard behind this is just astounding seen from the outside.
I hear this argument a lot and people use examples like BET and black churches. But take a step back and look at what led to black-specific things. MTV hardly played black artists. White churches excluded and actively attacked black Christians. White has been the default in America for a long time. Seems like that's slowly starting to change but until it does, there's going to be a need for things specifically target…
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Seconding this. And imagine the outrage if someone had made “X for white people”. There’d be riots in streets. The bizarreness and racist double standard behind this is just astounding seen from the outside.
In a majority white country you don't need to say x for white people, because that's the default. X for minority group isn't a double standard, it's a deviation from the norm. For example, it's pretty common to have x for lgbt people and it's pretty well understood that it's not a double standard because we accept that being straight is the norm.
If it's "focuses on content for ", that's great. Minorities tend to underrepresented and trying to address that balance by creating more for them is all bonus.
If it's "excludes all but ", I am not a fan; I thin it causes resentment. The ability to have a group that allows but not , but not have a group that allows but not , is _wrong_ in my mind. Admittedly, having a group that allows both but focuses on so that is unlikely to be interested in joining is reasonable.
I guess the act of specifically excluding/disallowing a group, unless it's acceptable for _all_ groups to do the same, inherently conveys "you are the worse of the two groups". It's insulting and an attack.
I can't help but feel like everyone commenting here read the headline, brushed straight past the lengthy explanation and went directly to outrage in the comment box. This is a streaming service set up to elevate content by black creators, to make up for the fact that the mainstream media under-represents those people. I'm struggling to see the outrage on a cultural level and on a startup level I can absolutely imagin…
> When I grew up in the 90s, it seemed like black people had a relatively high number of TV shows to choose from like "Martin", "Living Single," and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". It felt good. I felt represented. Unfortunately, it turns out the 90s were an aberration
I also grew up watching shows like these, and being a white person watching a black family didn't feel strange or incongruous at all.
Something I've already wondered is, what if that aspect of the 90s wasn't an aberration, but a feature from a time when there were fewer channels and diversity was concentrated in the fewer places everyone watched, due to how content was structured?
And is it unfortunate that relegating "black" content to its own service gives it a "niche" status that it doesn't deserve? Am I missing out on good content because signing up for any new streaming service is a high bar and something I don't do?
Will the bigger streaming services drop the content offered by this one, so that the largest audiences lose the opportunity to see this content?
Was having fewer channels actually in a way anti-monoculture?
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I don't know what country you're from but if you don't think there are subcultures in your country under-represented by the dominant media I'd assert you're almost definitely wrong. Perhaps it feels a little strange from the outside that such a subculture is definitively "black" but yeah, that's basically how things are in the US. The country has a deep history of racism and black people being literal slaves, in that…
You wrote: >> Agree. I could imagine Netflix-for-Turks streaming in Europe for overseas Turks!