It's good to see Netflix hold strong against the woke nonsense[1]. I hope they keep it together. Every time one of these big companies caves, the madness only grows. As Chappelle says in Closer, "I don't care about Twitter because Twitter isn't a real place." The media just loves the clickbait they get out of this drama but they are fickle and will move on shortly.
[1] yes, nonsense. The the vast Netflix library contains some dark stuff, but none of it was an issue last week because it doesn't attract attention the way Dave does
lol seems like a great excuse to take a day off. we don't need more woke censorship. if they don't like Chapelle, how about just not watching his show? Why do 800 people get to impose their idea of whats just on millions of Netflix users? If Netflix salaries are as high as I've heard they should have no trouble finding replacements for these clowns anyways.
Is it really censorship to ask one of the most valuable companies in the world not to give enormous sums of money to one of the richest comedians in the world specifically for content that is transphobic? Are you worried Dave Chappelle is going to be silenced?
> Is it really censorship to ask one of the most valuable companies in the world not to give enormous sums of money to one of the richest comedians in the world specifically for content that is transphobic?
That's not what happened, but ok. You believe what you like.
I'm worried they think they have the god given right to bend any organization to their view of what's right. Its not about the money or how big the company is, its about the consumers. I like Dave Chapelle. I even like plenty of old school comedians who have made racist jokes about my race. I like having lots of good content in one place so i dont need to sign up on 100 different video streaming platforms all representing ONLY content that features 0 wrong think according to the views of whoever works there.
I dont think you understand what censorship means if you believe that its somehow not censorship when a big company does it to a famous person. Yes, it is censorship. That's what the word means.
They clearly don't think they have a god given right, they have leverage.In the same way Chappelle uses his celebrity to spread hatred, they're using their leverage to disassociate with him.
I actually do understand what censorship means. Which is why it's so hilarious to hear people insist that Netflix chosing to not contract with Dave Chappelle is censorship. By your definition of censorship almost everyone is being censored.
From Wikipedia - Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. *This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient"*
The 2nd sentence is the important bit. A lot of people provably want to watch Chapelle as evidenced by his popularity and sales, but the employees demand the show be taken down despite that. You are implying that i believe any selection process at all is censorship which again seems disingenuous or misunderstands what the word is commonly understood to mean.
The protestors aren't suppressing Chappelle's ability to perform comedy or to speak, they're objecting to Netflix chosing to distribute the comedy through its private, subscription only network.
If you subscribe to the idea that Chappelle has the right to be paid by netflix, then so do I. Where's my money?
So what other means does anyone have to distribute speech that isn't commercial?
If you're OK with with protestors at Netflix doing it, then surely its OK for protestors at Youtube, Apple, a TV network or a comedy club to do the same. They can do it at a newspaper, a podcast, a radio station. Everything in a capitalist society is run for profit by some commercial entity. So what's the difference between whatever you call censorship and this? Suppressing distribution IS censorship.
And obviously I didn't say everyone has the right to be paid by Netflix. This is again just arguing in bad faith or woefully ignorant of how the world works. No, Netflix has the right to pay whomever they choose, which as a for-profit corporation, they will generally do based on how much of an audience you can pull to their platform. They pay Chapelle because he's funny and people like watching him.. not because he has "the right" to be paid. They pay him in exchange for something that Chapelle produces, not as a free handout. If you can convince a million people to pay to watch you get on a soapbox and cry about transphobia, then perhaps Netflix would sign a deal with you and pay you as well.
I'm confused. Isn't that the intent of the protest? Those walking out specifically want to silence Chappelle. At the end of the day, I don't care what happens between a multi-millionaire and a multi-billion dollar corporation but your question seems disingenuous at best.
They aren't protesting that Chappelle is performing comedy, they're protesting that their company is financing it and advertising it. That's a massive difference.
This is a naive take. Should every minority opinion be given the front page of netflix, regardless of the harm pushing it might leave in it's wake? Or just TERFs?
Anti-trans violence and suicidality is a major issue and speech around it needs to be cognizant of that. At best in his special Chappelle does a poor job of recognizing this be it because he is maligned, uninformed, or just unclear; Advocating that we should continue amplifying it's message as some insular censorship issue is utterly silly.
I don't know about what Chappelle said, but can you imagine all the latino employees walked off if there was any show that dipected latinos in a negative light, or black employees were upset because of older movies with negative stereotypes, that would seem untenable.
That's is the gist of Chappelle's points in his specials. He comments on arguing discrimination from a place of privilege, etc. He "closes" in the recent special by saying "Anybody who has actually listened to what I've been saying would know I don't have a problem with trans people, my problem is with white people."
Is there a study or report why all these social dramas are always coming from the FAANG companie? Are they simply because big? Or just the inner hierarchy is more young? Like I rarely hear things like this from IBM, or Intel, or Cisco etc. the list can go on. Maybe happens in those companies too but when I skim the headlines and I see LGBTQ / race / tech company it's always FB, Apple, Google, Netflix, Amazon
> Is there a study or report why all these social dramas are always coming from the FAANG companie?
Because these companies have the highest status and social justice outrage is a form of intra-elite status competition. You'll find that this stuff becomes more intense in academia as you move up the university prestige ladder.
While I don't find this surprising at all, I do find it interesting that a company like Netflix, a studio where most of their originals are overwhelmingly pro-LGBT, still has this issue when one of the biggest comedians in the world pisses off some tiny segment of their workforce. It seems that this segment of people are never going to be happy.
Interesting that this article uses the "latinx" terminology. Here in Colombia where I live, I have only ever met one person who supports the use of this terminology whereas many people I talk to find it explicitly offensive that a bunch of foreigners think they get to rewrite their language.
It's ironically an incredibly culturally insensitive move wrapped in the veil of self congratulating cultural sensitivity.
> Here in Colombia where I live, I have only ever met one person who supports the use of this terminology whereas many people I talk to find it explicitly offensive that a bunch of foreigners think they get to rewrite their language.
Um, since when is American English (the language in which “Latinx”, as a neologism, has been introduced by that language’s speakers) “their” (Colombians’) language?
Or are Colombians upset that English-speaking Americans of Latin American descent are rewriting American English?
(That said, Latinx seems to be preferred as a self-label almost exclusively used by people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, and used other than that almost exclusively by people to whom it does not apply as a label for others, so it is problematic as a general label linguistic and language ownership issues aside.)
This thread is already full of people who didn't read or understand the critique of Netflix as presented in the article. It's not an issue of "Dave Chappelle thinks a bad thing and should be punished" it's "Netflix promotes an equivocation that actively harms people".
> “This is not an argument with two sides. It is an argument with trans people who want to be alive and people who don’t want us to be,” Field added. “This all gets brushed off as offense though — because if we’re just ‘too sensitive’ then it is easy to ignore us.”
Went into the special before it hit the news because I like some of Chappelle's other work. I liked a few parts, and I didn't like others. I think it's totally super neato that Dave Chappelle has his personal opinions on trans people, but publicly playing the "just asking questions" game costs putting giving both sides on equal footing beforehand.
This is an irresponsible thing of Netflix to do, and silly to conflate with censorship. Yelling "I think there's a fire" in a crowded building causes as much harm as yelling "are we sure the building's really burning?" when it is. Absolutely think and say either if you want to, but know that when you amplify them it causes real social harm.
Moving 'social harm' to mean something that might negatively affect anyone's mental health is such an unpractical (not to mention unethical in my view) standard to have leveled equally on any sort of media platform.
Someone can choose not to watch Chappelle. So you're implying anything indirect like changing someone's opinion negatively is doing 'social harm', which could legitimately be used to argue just about anything. Don't just think about what you're saying for your pet cause or whatever is trendy at the time, think it through at a societal level for all possible uses of such rhetoric.
You're generalizing so that you can dismiss my argument, though it is probably my fault for being unclear.
When you "just ask questions" on a public platform you implicitly give credence the side with less acceptance. This is fine with issues that are undecided or harmless, but trans personhood is neither. If you agree that trans rights are human rights, and are aware of the trans suicidality rates alongside the latest push of anti-trans legislation in the States and Europe, then it should be apparent that Netflix did not use their large platform responsibly here.
I'm not worried about the trans kid who clicks off of a C-tier netflix special after 20 minutes. They'll be fine. I'm concerned about their uninformed schoolmates, or their school board, or their parents, who get the impression that the personhood of trans people is some disputed academic issue which they are fine to have a "trans-exclusionary" stance on.
Tech companies are poorly positioned to engage in responsible platforming, and pressuring them when they misstep is important.
Did Dave Chappele actually say "trans people shouldn't have personhood"? Because otherwise you are making a huge leap to further my own argument. Just because someone might infer that is Dave's stance or have their own view influenced does not mean it causes harm. Otherwise we're back to my original point that if negative stereotypes are perpetuated by any media that might influence the general population's opinion, you can call that harm. That's ridiculous and I know you don't believe that should be applied equally.
Pretending that not wholesale embracing someone’s lifestyle is akin to violence is just an insane concept. If I think someone is weird that doesn’t mean I want to murder them.
34 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 82.6 ms ] thread[1] yes, nonsense. The the vast Netflix library contains some dark stuff, but none of it was an issue last week because it doesn't attract attention the way Dave does
You spoke too soon: https://nypost.com/2021/10/12/netflix-reinstates-worker-terr...
That's not what happened, but ok. You believe what you like.
I dont think you understand what censorship means if you believe that its somehow not censorship when a big company does it to a famous person. Yes, it is censorship. That's what the word means.
I actually do understand what censorship means. Which is why it's so hilarious to hear people insist that Netflix chosing to not contract with Dave Chappelle is censorship. By your definition of censorship almost everyone is being censored.
The 2nd sentence is the important bit. A lot of people provably want to watch Chapelle as evidenced by his popularity and sales, but the employees demand the show be taken down despite that. You are implying that i believe any selection process at all is censorship which again seems disingenuous or misunderstands what the word is commonly understood to mean.
If you subscribe to the idea that Chappelle has the right to be paid by netflix, then so do I. Where's my money?
If you're OK with with protestors at Netflix doing it, then surely its OK for protestors at Youtube, Apple, a TV network or a comedy club to do the same. They can do it at a newspaper, a podcast, a radio station. Everything in a capitalist society is run for profit by some commercial entity. So what's the difference between whatever you call censorship and this? Suppressing distribution IS censorship.
And obviously I didn't say everyone has the right to be paid by Netflix. This is again just arguing in bad faith or woefully ignorant of how the world works. No, Netflix has the right to pay whomever they choose, which as a for-profit corporation, they will generally do based on how much of an audience you can pull to their platform. They pay Chapelle because he's funny and people like watching him.. not because he has "the right" to be paid. They pay him in exchange for something that Chapelle produces, not as a free handout. If you can convince a million people to pay to watch you get on a soapbox and cry about transphobia, then perhaps Netflix would sign a deal with you and pay you as well.
This is a naive take. Should every minority opinion be given the front page of netflix, regardless of the harm pushing it might leave in it's wake? Or just TERFs?
Anti-trans violence and suicidality is a major issue and speech around it needs to be cognizant of that. At best in his special Chappelle does a poor job of recognizing this be it because he is maligned, uninformed, or just unclear; Advocating that we should continue amplifying it's message as some insular censorship issue is utterly silly.
"Never let a good controversy go to waste."
Because these companies have the highest status and social justice outrage is a form of intra-elite status competition. You'll find that this stuff becomes more intense in academia as you move up the university prestige ladder.
Peter Turchin has written a lot about the general dynamics of intra-elite competition and elite overproduction: see https://www.amazon.com/Secular-Cycles-Peter-Turchin/dp/06911... for example
“Look at all the good we’ve done, surely we’ve racked up enough karma points to shit on some people?”
Does that sound right?
It's ironically an incredibly culturally insensitive move wrapped in the veil of self congratulating cultural sensitivity.
Um, since when is American English (the language in which “Latinx”, as a neologism, has been introduced by that language’s speakers) “their” (Colombians’) language?
Or are Colombians upset that English-speaking Americans of Latin American descent are rewriting American English?
(That said, Latinx seems to be preferred as a self-label almost exclusively used by people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, and used other than that almost exclusively by people to whom it does not apply as a label for others, so it is problematic as a general label linguistic and language ownership issues aside.)
> “This is not an argument with two sides. It is an argument with trans people who want to be alive and people who don’t want us to be,” Field added. “This all gets brushed off as offense though — because if we’re just ‘too sensitive’ then it is easy to ignore us.”
Went into the special before it hit the news because I like some of Chappelle's other work. I liked a few parts, and I didn't like others. I think it's totally super neato that Dave Chappelle has his personal opinions on trans people, but publicly playing the "just asking questions" game costs putting giving both sides on equal footing beforehand.
This is an irresponsible thing of Netflix to do, and silly to conflate with censorship. Yelling "I think there's a fire" in a crowded building causes as much harm as yelling "are we sure the building's really burning?" when it is. Absolutely think and say either if you want to, but know that when you amplify them it causes real social harm.
Someone can choose not to watch Chappelle. So you're implying anything indirect like changing someone's opinion negatively is doing 'social harm', which could legitimately be used to argue just about anything. Don't just think about what you're saying for your pet cause or whatever is trendy at the time, think it through at a societal level for all possible uses of such rhetoric.
When you "just ask questions" on a public platform you implicitly give credence the side with less acceptance. This is fine with issues that are undecided or harmless, but trans personhood is neither. If you agree that trans rights are human rights, and are aware of the trans suicidality rates alongside the latest push of anti-trans legislation in the States and Europe, then it should be apparent that Netflix did not use their large platform responsibly here.
I'm not worried about the trans kid who clicks off of a C-tier netflix special after 20 minutes. They'll be fine. I'm concerned about their uninformed schoolmates, or their school board, or their parents, who get the impression that the personhood of trans people is some disputed academic issue which they are fine to have a "trans-exclusionary" stance on.
Tech companies are poorly positioned to engage in responsible platforming, and pressuring them when they misstep is important.