[danielmarkbruce]

Amazon is a retailer. AWS is compute(/etc) for rent. AirBnB is homes for short term rent. Quibi is/was short movies on mobile. Google and facebook are advertising. Netflix is movies/tv shows. There is no such thing as a pure technology company - the technology has to be used to do something people want.

The people closest to the thing which is about to be dominated by machines are often clueless about what is going on.

[ofcourseyoudo]

First, do all the techbro failures where they thought they were smarter than the industry.

Second, show the company where the technologists made the same thing the old school was making, and better. Amazon retail disrupted but didn't destroy physical retail, and certainly didn't replace it, and certainly isn't better at it. Same with AirBnB => hotels, Google/FB => advertising (disrupted with a new type of product... a tech product... but have no presence in literally every other form of the industry).

The closest thing you can get to dominance is Netflix making movies and television, and there's no evidence that they make better movies and television than the old school. Technologies can use money to leverage their position against slow-moving industry players, but in this specific discussion, we've seen nothing to suggest that eventually AI could make a better film than human beings.

If you were actually in the industry you'd know that the top decisionmakers at Netflix have decreasing respect from the creative community, increasing reputation for being a cheap and difficult company to work with, and are generally regarded as a mill that creates a lot of mediocre to slightly-above-average content that gets swept aside every 3-6 months for the next wave of grist. Profitable certainly but nowhere close to being a leader in quality, for as much money as they've thrown at trying to win that Best Picture trophy (and spoiler: Emilia Perez isn't gonna do it this year either).

If you don't know anything about Hollywood, maybe you should stay out of a discussion about Hollywood.

[danielmarkbruce]

Nope, you do the opposite. The list is long on both sides, displaying how difficult it is to know if industry knowledge is an asset or liability.

Of course they don't do the exact same thing. Only someone in industry would think to do the exact same thing. The value proposition is the same in each case, that's what matters.

The people who don't know Hollywood are the ones taking over the entertainment business. Customers of the entertainment business don't care about the "creative community" or "hollywood".

[ofcourseyoudo]

> The people who don't know Hollywood are the ones taking over the entertainment business

Really? Who is that exactly? Or is Reed Hastings just a different money guy, which the entertainment business has always had?

Aside from money, where is the actual tech that Netflix is using to "dominate" the industry? And how does it manifest? I know one specific example that you probably have no idea about, and it has nothing to do with actually making a movie.

[danielmarkbruce]

Sure, it's just money guys. Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, Apple. Just money.

If this is the story hollywood insiders tell themselves (and I doubt the smart ones think this...), it's no wonder they are becoming irrelevant.

[ofcourseyoudo]

Except the Hollywood insiders still make all of the creative decisions (after the money people make the money decisions).

Even including Netflix's success, there is no segment of the movie and television business where technology is dominating the actual creation of the content. And this conversation started with a Ben Affleck video about how that creativity isn't going to be replaced anytime soon. An algorithm can tell Netflix to greenlight a show about "nonbinary police detectives investigating election fraud", but there's no computer touching the script, direction, or any decisions the department heads are taking. And studios are already hitting the diminishing returns of ingesting a bunch of screenplays to spit out mediocre scripts (at enormous and rising cost).

Feel free to offer counter-examples, just so we're still staying with arm's length of reality.