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Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

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Re: Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

#21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of Netflix content isn’t outrageous in any way. There’s a lot of attention for letting famous comedians do their usual routines in a recorded special, but we’re talking about less than 10 hours of television in a library of like 20,000 hours of Netflix originals.

> 99.9% of Netflix content isn’t outrageous in any way. You could say that's only because it has become the new norm. The Simpsons was considered to be controversial at first.

'Was', heh. Bart makes delinquency look cool and in the 90s I personally saw a fair few young boys my own age emulating Bart and getting into trouble for it. I think the Simpsons is appropriate for teenagers, but not much younger.

Re: Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

#22
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.

Re: Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

#23
post #3

"Hey, offending people sells and we're in it for the money...". If this bothers you, chant "we're in it for the money" until it doesn't. If it still bothers you, get outta here.

I find the idea that you shouldn't offend people odd and pretty recent. For example, when I was growing up, my mother would say "We have a G rated household." Meaning: in our household we could not watch any movies or TV shows that would not be rated G. As you might imagine, Netflix hosts lots of content that my parents would find offensive. Likewise, religious people might find pro-atheist content on Netflix offensive, anti-porn people offended by Netflix's borderline softcore pornography, political groups might be offended by various documentaries, and so on.

You really cannot hold a diverse selection of content and avoid offending people. Why is avoiding offending people now supposed to be important for Netflix?

Re: Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

#25
post #15

They shouldn't shy away from controversial content for fear of offending people.

Their core demographic is offended though.

Is it? If this easily offended demographic were really so big the execs at Netflix are not so stupid to alienate them. The more mundane reason is this demographic is very tiny though they may be very vocal.

Re: Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

#27
post #14

> if you don’t like that, you can quit. Someone will be doing layoffs soon and want people to leave voluntarily

More like they don’t want to waste their time on managing lot of prima-donnas.

An excellent business decision.

Re: Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

#28

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.

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.

I respectfully disagree. I haven't seen cuties, but I just watched the trailer. The movie may be a good thoughtful coming of age movie, but the trailer (at least in my opinion) did not characterize that at all. If I watch a trailer and it seems to indicate a movie that's about the sexualization of very young girls, I think it's perfectly fine for me to cancel my subscription without watching the movie. You may disagree with that sentiment, and that's fine, but I think that many people who did not watch the movie had seen the trailer and had a similar reaction that I just had.

Re: Netflix to Employees: If you don't like our content, you can quit

#29

> We let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices This is a funny take on it. Of course Netflix censors specific artists and voices by choosing to just not produce their content.

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...
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