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Comment by vortico | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that the privacy concerns are anything out of the ordinary. It's simply a reminder that Netflix employees can see users' watch data. Everyone knows that.

Revealing private data is a bit weirder, but it is common for companies to release occassional anonymized data. They sell much of this data to advertisers who get to see all of it, so it serves as a reminder of that. But again, nothing out of the ordinary.

The attitude of the post is the big WTF. If I went up to anyone I knew, and said "you do <X>, who hurt you?", I'd be smacked, a fight would start, or I'd not see that person again. The post is basically saying "To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you!" Why would any PR employee think this is okay?

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> The attitude of the post is the big WTF

I don't do twitter, but from second-hand exposure, I am under the impression that this attitude is exactly what some of these corporate social media accounts are aiming for (less corporate, more joking).

Look at some of the follow-up threads to the comment in question:

https://twitter.com/netflix/status/940053684314021889

https://twitter.com/netflix/status/940053555813027842

I keep seeing Wendy's, PornHub and a few other account's tweets in other media, and their attitude is comparably even more "fun".

(Personally, I enjoy this. If I want pure corporate-speak, I can always read the Investor Relations pages.)

"You're not my mom" is supposed to be a joke, just like "you're not my real dad" when someone asks you to do something. But the people responding to Netflix's tweet ("ok sweetie") seem to have taken it seriously and are upset with Netflix for "disrespecting" their customer. Is outrage really our go-to response these days?

When you're an organisation the size of Netflix, it is neither necessary nor desirable for all of your staff to be able to see personal data about your users. Imagine if anyone working at Facebook or Google could just log in and read every user's posts or mail.

Obviously some people will need to be able to access whatever database holds this information for practical reasons, but that access should be restricted to the minimum necessary level and there should be processes and technical measures in place to provide oversight and prevent abuse. This is not only good practice for ethical reasons, it's also a legal requirement in places like the EU. Even the US, not normally known for its strong privacy protections, passed the Video Privacy Protection Act recognising the threat in this area.

The fact that apparently someone at Netflix was just trolling through the data in the first place and then felt the need to share it in a derogatory way implies that Netflix do not have adequate controls in place. Something is wrong here: even if the access itself was to some collective/anonymized data set, anyone with the attitude demonstrated by that tweet probably shouldn't have that level of access. As we've seen from Netflix and others before, sometimes even bulk data sets can lead to individual data subjects being identified where this was not the intention.

I'm not saying Netflix exposes all personal data to all their staff, and it's very likely that the PR staff have no direct access to this data whatsoever.

Here's likely what happened: DB admin guy runs a query to see who has the highest number of views for any movie last month. Notices that there are a lot of watches for A Christmas Prince. Laughs about it to his officemates, word spreads, and finally the PR department knows about it. Guy in the department thinks it's so funny that he makes a Twitter post about it. Gets past review due to sheer probability.

So yes, it's somewhat weird that they released the anonymized information, but I don't think that it's outright scary.

> Here's likely what happened:

Alternate hypothesis: someone on the social media team saw brands like Wendy's doing well with the "edgy-but-funny" thing, then made up this tweet, and then tweeted it.

> "you do <X>, who hurt you?"

It's a meme format, Netflix is just trying to be edgy/cool here, trying to fit in with the "fellow kids" [1]

[1] https://i.imgur.com/6CxLwMG.jpg

    > To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you!

I'm a bit out of the loop. What Tweet have Netflix said this in?

The tweet says "To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?"

So there are 53 users they are directly addressing, and then mocking "You've been damaged mentally by someone in your past."

I don't quite see it as offensive as that, but perhaps my skin is a bit thicker than most. I think it's easy to see it how you want to see it, so we should be careful of that.

What you are saying is correct. It might not offend many, and it surely doesn't offend me, but the #1 rule of PR is that if you have the slightest thought that there's a hidden meaning of your statement, or if someone could conceivably take your statement the wrong way, it will be taken the wrong way, perhaps by thousands.

Example: "Come in for a spa and get a free steak rib at a local restaurant" sounds 100% innocent, but there is a small fraction of a percent chance that someone might think "But what about an offer for me, since I don't eat meat?!" In public relations, probability values get converted to a number of real humans, so PR staff has to be aware of this probability of everything they post (which is always nonzero). That of course doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted, but they shouldn't be surprised when they get 20 negative comments if 100,000 people see their statement. It's a tradeoff considering the gain of making a statement.

Twitter's post easily breaks this rule without much subtlety.

The assertion that the tweet implies “you’ve been damaged mentally by someone in your past” is clearly accurate. No one seems to be denying that.

If this, coming from someone who doesn’t know you, does not sound offensive, what does?

Totally agree, it's a tweet, it's not profane, it's supposed to be a joke. People need to lighten up.

Are you saying black people can’t take a joke? Holy crap dude.

That's an easy position to take if you are not one of the 53 people in question.

> To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?

If it was me on an 18 day streak, I would not feel offended. Actually, I find the tweet funny.

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