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by virtuous_signal 1701 days ago
Thanks for sharing that list, it definitely challenged some of my preconceptions. As someone who watched The Closer and didn't think it went too far, I think most would agree that there should be some fixed line to judge what goes too far and shouldn't be on their platform. It's sad that this line doesn't seem to be determined by any principles -- or at least any explicit principles. These 2 examples make me think the "principles" being followed are 1) Money, and 2) PR/current events (George Floyd protests in the case of removing episodes with blackface).
1 comments
gspencley 1701 days ago
"I think most would agree that there should be some fixed line to judge what goes too far and shouldn't be on their platform."

I can see the need for things like parental filters, or better user controls to be able to get recommendations for things you actually want to see.

I would also be the first person to agree that Netflix has the right to decide what content they want to distribute.

But from a customer point of view what I want from Netflix is to give give me maximum choice. Give me absolutely every kind of content imaginable, offensive or G-rated, and then give me the tools to be able to limit what my children can view and to fine tune the sorts of recommendations I get.

I'm a huge believer in "if you don't like it, watch something else" and "if someone else likes it, that's none of your business."

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handoflixue 1701 days ago
Unfortunately, from a business perspective, there will always be a trade off of "buying a license to X means we can't afford to license Y or Z". They spent millions to get this special, and probably could have gotten a dozen works from less-famous comedians for that same money.
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wutbrodo 1701 days ago
That's driven by how many people will watch it (demonstrably, very many, in Chappelle's case), not by the magnitude of offense taken by some number of people.

The proportion of people not watching a show will always be far higher than those watching it, so there's room for offense from non-watchers to drive product decisions. The parent comment is saying that he doesn't want that to factor in at all, which is orthogonal to the question of Netflix needing to allocate resources between content.

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