Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

news.ycombinator.com

551–560 of 898 posts

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#551
post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely Telemundo/Univision's American arms don't have to deal with this type of criticism. The "for" is clearly indicating a target audience, not that you can't sign-up if you're not Black with photo identification, which is the courts' criteria for illegal discrimination and segregation.

Spanish-speaking is not a physical trait is it?

Majority of Black Americans are a distinct shared cultural group, like Hispanic folk, who come in many different pigments, also like Hispanic folk, who also tend to have an identifiable manner of speaking and protocol, also like Hispanic folk.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#553

If you manage to talk to Tyler Perry I have a pitch for a new movie idea. "Tyler Perry's Madea's Gillian's Island". Basically, Madea wins some sort of lottery and wins a free vacation all expenses paid to a resort in Mexico with her and the gang (and tyler + his daughter, and her new boyfriend) but the plane goes down over the bermuda triangle and they end up shored up on an unknown island. Throughout the film tyler'…

So; Gilligan's Island for black people

I can't find the quote from Tyler Perry, but Madea is definitely not just for Black people. All of his stories are like this: they trick you into watching because it's funny, and easy to watch - but at the same time every story also had hard to talk about problems related to things like family life, drugs, intramarital issues, and prostitution. I listened to an interview with Tyler and he called it a bait-and-switch.

Tyler Perry has already played into film tropes with Boo! and Boo! 2, where Madea gets into some ghoulish hijinks - so Madea's Gilligan's Island would be along those lines.

I love tropes, or playing with tropes more like. it's an inversion of science fiction - where sci-fi relies on changing the parameters of the world (What if we had robots? what if we had telepathy? Predict t he future? How would human life change? What would happen?), a play on tropes allows you to explore how a character you already know might deal with a situation that has been played out manifold times.

Yes, Madea is made for black people, but I'm not black, and I absolutely adore Madea films. I wish more films were made like this - it's an underrepresented category in film. It's been tried by some christian film makers, but they usually come of hard on the nose and aren't enjoyable. Or you have just straight comedies, okay fine. How about we mingle the two and use the story to convey a clear message everyone can grasp? I love it - through all of Madea's characters personal faults, and through the other characters faults, trials and tribulations, there's redemption.

Tyler perry, please make this movie.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of "white" is not a consequence of the melting pot idea. The concept of "white" was explicitly born as a way to justify enslaving and treating a group of people as property for generations. If one wants to solve the injustices of the past, its important to actually acknowledge the reality of those injustices and how they feed into modern day. The "melting pot" theory I suspect was always a form of injusti…

Most “white” people in America today were not considered so 100-150 years ago. Irish, Slavs, Eastern Europeans, Italians, Jews, Levantine Arabs, and pretty much everyone other than English, Germans and French. My point is that this identity was expanded to be inclusive in order to build social cohesion. That was a good thing, but now let’s rename it to just “American” and include all ethnic groups, instead of going b…

> "[white] identity was expanded to be inclusive in order to build social cohesion. That was a good thing.."

Social cohesion largely as a means of sharpening anti-Blackness and of labor control, particularly during and after the defeat of Reconstruction and due to growing relevance of the industrial organized labor movement. Du Bois did an immense amount of work critiquing pretty much exactly this.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#555
post #17

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 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 imagine there is a market for this. If you find any niche that makes sense, go for it. There's a reason for MotorTrend to shift into cable and on-demand, Disney, etc. The…

> If you find any niche that makes sense, go for it

Even if it meant objectifying people into a market segment just to make money, under the branding of empathy and identity?

Just because it is branded “black” doesn’t mean it won’t perpetuate harmful racial stereotypes, such as “being black is the most important thing about you as a person”. In fact, it would have every reason to amplify that message to keep and grow their “segment”, regardless of its psycho-social consequences.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#556
Really interesting and radical idea. Having content specifically for a black audience seems so controversial at first but could be a great way to include black people more in pop culture. I think there is definitely demand for this: both from producers and viewers. If such a service existed it may even help cross-cultural knowledge sharing.

I read a good comment here from a netflix employee about the technical challenges. DRM seems like its going to be a bitch. Would be a cool startup to work for though

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#558
Strategically, are you trying to be a brand, a studio, a platform, an marketplace, or maybe all the above? I think the question I have is what to try to build first.

As a brand, I see you trying to become a trusted provider of content for an underserved black-identifying audience with diverse tastes. To build brand first, I wonder if you don't want to put BlackOak-curated content out on existing media platforms. That could be #BlackOakRecommends on twitter.

As a studio, and one competing with other producers, how will you differentiate yourselves to content creators? I guess that starts with the ability to get one's content in front of subscribers, but is there something beyond audience (which you are building), and money (which you are growing), that you can offer creators? Maybe that is access to and information about audience.

As a platform, you are starting with UScreen.tv, and categorically the questions I have are how does your consumption experience road map and analytics & recommendations road map line up with theirs? How will you be able to deploy your own tech relative to theirs? Analytics might differentiate you. Netflix reportedly does not share much. How might you be able (through analytics) to inform creators about audience response through your platform? Can you use analytics uniquely to reinforce and maintain the trust of your audience - e.g., when the platform recommends a video or creator to a user, be able to answer the user's question "Why am I seeing this?"

As a market place, you are an intermediary between content consumers and content creators. How do they to find each other and be rewarded from that - how users browse and how you recommend would be central. Maybe you license curator channels on your site. Perhaps that is in part potentially how you are able to connect creators directly to audiences, i.e. like hosted artist's pages. Perhaps the "BlackOak artist's page" is the place that consolidates an artist's identity, catalog and channels - twitter, instagram, twitch, etc - vs the artist's own page, youtube channel, weebly, etc. So, that's MySpace, of yore, on BlackOak.

If there's a theme to all this, I would say it is how to make consumers, curators, and creators more visible in relation to a consumption experience. Ideas are cheap! good luck with everything.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#559
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's time to ban HN and force everyone onto reddit then, because HN is a bubble. I disagree with your implicit assumption that all bubbles are inherently negative.

While HN is a bubble it will not result in burning the country to the ground. The problem is when polarization create war between 2 camp.

Is this still about BlackOakTV?

Regardless, who decides which category a site/app falls into? There are legal remedies that can fix literal "war between 2 camps", everything else is freedom of expression.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#560

I'm Russian and, probably, I don't really understand the situation with race in US. But I think that MLK was fighting against this "X for black people" thing. (X == buses, schools, shops, etc). Isn't it racism and segregation?

Oh my, buddy, you had it even worse than the yanks did. Have you ever had an apology from your state for the serfdom, any reparations?

The Atlantic empire enslaved people different by color, language, religion and used them as a tool for centuries. Now, they are attempting to fix it.

The Rus' enslaved people of it's own creed, skin color and religion. Made them property as well. But, when serfdom cracked, everyone was like `okay moving on to the next chapter of our glorious history`.

Why would you reckon you'd ever grasp foreign problems, when at your own house you were scammed like a sucker?

Post reply on HN