Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

#231

Post by emptysongglass » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:43 AM UTC

swivelmaster wrote: post #206

solarhoma wrote: post #189

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This has been studied for decades. The number of people who have had some kind of sexual experience with the opposite sex is far higher than many expect. I recommend doing some more reading on this subject before coming to the (ridiculous) conclusion that people are claiming to be bisexual because they somehow enjoy feeling oppressed. https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical...

Actually, if you go to /r/teenagers many teens complain that LGBTQ+ has become a mark of status such that teens who proclaim loudest their bonafides as trans/bi/whatever are those who reap status.

Teenagers have always pushed against the prevailing narrative, it's how we get new ideas into the world. It becomes problematic when viral vectors of trends are disseminated at the speed of thought globally. Humans aren't hardwired for this. See also the recent HN post that more teens are depressed than ever. It has nothing to do with actual geopolitics: remember that the Cold War was extremely bleak for Americans and go back just a little earlier and you have World War II and the Great Depression.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by ghostly_s » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #6

This chart [1] was making the rounds a while back. Whether you totally agree with its methodology or not, it certainly suggests that many people consider a huge swath of Netflix' content average at best. And for someone like me who doesn't watch a huge amount of video, that's not a great look. Tastes differ of course but my tastes aren't that out of the mainstream. And I'd rather a streaming service had a modest numb…

The only meaningful thing this chart is telling me is that Netflix produces an absurd volume of content.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by hef19898 » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:47 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #219

qq66 wrote: post #214

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Netflix had great streaming tech years before anyone else did. I wonder why they decided that the right move was to compete on content. If they had just set up a platform where any content provider could sell their content (on a monthly or one-off basis) for a small cut like 15%, they might have become the default "TV store."

They had to. Consumers don't care about streaming tech; in their eyes all the services are the same levels of fine. They do care about content and once content producers started rolling their own streaming services, cutting Netflix out, and pulling their content, they had to do something to keep their shelves looking stocked.

It depends, Shopify for example is providing eCommerce technology to shop owners. And they do great. Netflix could have gone that route.

Contrary to Shopify so, streaming lives of content. Which means the only reasonable customers for Netflix tech were content owners looking at their own streaming service (not that many around pre-Netflix, Amazon developed it's own tech) or content creators (excluding big studios, this market was and is owned by YouTube). I think Netflix didn't have much of a choice, and they did very well, didn't they?

Anecdata: Most of my current streaming is happening on Netflix (original content from Spain, Scandinavia, Poland,... stuff you don't get somewhere else) or Disney+ (incredible how deep Disney's catalogue is, especially for older films like Alien). Prime Video fell behind quite a bit on the content front. Netflix has an opportunity so, IMHO, in cooperating with local studios and producers in smaller countries. Something neither Disney nor Amazon seem to be capable of doing.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by lovemenot » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:50 AM UTC

ikr678 wrote: post #184

russelldjimmy wrote: post #165

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I agree with the other poster. It’s not relatable. No offence to the minorities. It feels like forced messaging to the rest of us. Why represent only minorities in race, ethnicity and sexuality? Why not represent people such as war widows, people with skin diseases, mental disabilities, people with above average heights, obese people, etc.? For those of us not living in the USA, it feels like cultural imperialism. “W…

Shows produced outside of the US are generally better on the diversity of appearance front. UK content particular is much more watchable for me, as actors are closer to regular people you'd see on the street vs the very thin, athletic, impossibly white toothed American casting ideal.

I approve of the use of talented non-white actors in British period dramas, such as David Copperfield. It is obvious that the person's skin colour is ahistorical for the role. But it doesn't matter. We the audience are tacitly invited to look past this detail. It seems a little incongruous for about ten seconds, then just disappears into their fine performance.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by emptysongglass » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

dillondoyle wrote: post #164

user3939382 wrote: post #155

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Gen Z isn’t the world. US lgbt pop is 7% according to Wikipedia and that sounds high to me, maybe college kids experimenting with their identity in response to woke culture. I’d guess it’s more like 3-4%

Being gay or trans or non binary or whatever is not contagious. There is no reason for differing %, except the trend is very clear: The older the generation the fewer % are out. It's because people are more supported and more able to come out. More people aren't gay. More people are able to live their truth publicly. * and based on your comment I will leap that you aren't a part of this community. The ugly truth is i…

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Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by danjac » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

topspin wrote: post #148

colinmhayes wrote: post #127

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> Documentaries that were more ideological than interesting I can not stand how every "documentary" on netflix is actually an extremely opinionated political piece or true crime. And I usually agree with the political opinion, it's just incredibly annoying and divisive, and really it mostly feels dishonest.

Just suffered through their Three Mile Island "documentary" yesterday while working on something else. Apparently Bechtel operates a hit squad in Pennsylvania and everyone in a 5 mile radius got severe cancer. Out of four hours you get about 10 minutes of meaningful detail about the incident; the rest is headline rehash you can get on the first page of a Google search, emotional personal stories and a lot of self pro…

To be fair, they did interview a cartoon villain for balance.

There was no real attempt to compare the enormous toll of deaths and environmental damage of fossil fuels compared to nuclear. I kept thinking "did Shell commission this?".

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by ralusek » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

mitchdoogle wrote: post #215

solarhoma wrote: post #189

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The culture is more accepting of LGBTQ these days, so people are more likely to admit it. It's that simple - there's no need to try and psychoanalyze millions of people based on your political ideology.

But you've just done that. The answer is that it's obviously not that simple.

What we know is that there has been a large percentage increase in the number of people identifying as queer.

One hypothesis is that this is because there was previously a certain percentage of the population who was queer, but the societal cost for identifying as such was sufficiently high so as to prevent them from doing so. It is therefore the lowering of the societal cost for identifying as such that has allowed this percentage of the population that was always queer to freely identify as such. Your explanation is that that is the only factor and it is as simple as that.

The hypothesis that you're dismissing is that not only has the societal cost for identifying as queer diminished, but that it has actually transitioned well into a net benefit in many communities (i.e. woke Gen Z, and others). Therefore, many of the people identifying as queer are doing so not because they are inherently queer and now free to identify as such, but rather that they are not actually queer, but see social advantages from identifying as such. The claim here is purportedly substantiated by the fact that the largest increase has been in those low stakes identities such as bisexual or demisexual, wherein the person can basically continue to operate normally as a heterosexual while claiming the social advantages of being queer.

Now, as I said, the answer is that this is definitely both. I don't, however, expect you to discuss something like this in good faith, because you seem quite keen on reducing it to your pet conclusion. I'm especially not interested in what I'm anticipating, which are a myriad of claims as to how being queer is still a marked disadvantage. I'm sorry, but within the circles for which we've seen explosive growth in identification, it very much is not.

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by philjohn » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

esrauch wrote: post #169

colinmhayes wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Documentaries that were more ideological than interesting I can not stand how every "documentary" on netflix is actually an extremely opinionated political piece or true crime. And I usually agree with the political opinion, it's just incredibly annoying and divisive, and really it mostly feels dishonest.

I feel this is just true for every non-Ken Burns documentary I've ever seen and I find it kind of annoying. They always seem to have some axe to grind and just do anything they can to support that biased thesis with no room for caveats or shades of gray.

I think this is more a feature of people flocking to more shallow documentaries, which pushes them up the recommendation funnel.

Icarus was fantastic, for instance, but of potentially limited appeal (which is a shame, as it touches on a lot of topics of broad interest from doping in sport to political intrigue).

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by Dracophoenix » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #214

ggm wrote: post #119

I'm just here to say how nice the tcp/ip tuning team is. The content may be a battle zone but their internet technology is focussed on tcp optimisations which make sense. They have amazing instrumentation in the kernel, and they give back to FreeBSD. I don't work for them, I have met them. Nice guys.

Netflix had great streaming tech years before anyone else did. I wonder why they decided that the right move was to compete on content. If they had just set up a platform where any content provider could sell their content (on a monthly or one-off basis) for a small cut like 15%, they might have become the default "TV store."

That might result in legal problems (see FCC vs Turner cases) or unfavorable terms for the company (i.e no incentive for networks to keep shows on Netflix).

Re: Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

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Post by hef19898 » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:55 AM UTC

scotu wrote: post #181

solarhoma wrote: post #175

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Is it truth or is it being force fed down children’s throats? How can the Western world go from a ~2% homosexuality rate to 20% in two generations? It appears we both have a different perspective on how we got here.

By having homosexuality violently oppressed, ostracized and ridiculed in the past, and slowly reversing that attitude towards it? People were literally criminals for loving people of the same sex...

And if you go way back in history, homosexuality was totally accepted in places like ancient Greece. It's good that TV series show homosexuality as something normal, because it is. And if it helps to encourage more people to openly come out as either homo- or bi-sexual all the better.