1k Netflix employees threaten work stoppage over Dave Chappelle
thinkcivics.com
thinkcivics.com
Chappelle paid tribute to her in his special, but he did it in an offensive way. But given their relationship, the tribute was probably something she would have approved of and her family has defended Chappelle's tribute: https://deadline.com/2021/10/dave-chappelle-the-closer-defen...
Most of the outrage appears to come from people who haven't actually watched the special and are taking Chappelle's quotes about racism and LGBT issues out of context.
I find this part of the statement to be a falsehood. He did it in a comedic way, which was part of the point he was trying to make. See: https://nypost.com/2021/10/15/airplane-creator-slams-joy-kil...
I am always prepared to be offended by comedy, and if I am, I will keep watching, but only if it is funny enough.
If the main point was critique with comedy, sure, it makes sense to see through it.
Accredited to Chaucer
But you can't just say "F You!" and say it's a joke. It's not a "free for all" card.
It has to at least try to be funny
Ever wonder why "clean" comics are so rare?
Comedy is offensive by it's very nature.
He makes jokes about Jews, and Blacks, and Whites, that are completely overshadowed by Twitter (which is not a real place) claiming it was entirely anti-trans.
No one is claiming it was his funniest, but there was a subtext there. That it wasn’t about them, but about him. He’s not wrong at how successful without violence the trans movement has been compared to civil rights for blacks.
I thought the goal was to be offensive at the beginning and end with the message that canceling comedians for jokes is bad for everyone.
2021 is looking to surpass that...
Part of his criticism was centered around how the 'alphabet people' have made rapid strides, but that conveniently forgets that black people can be gay or trans too, and also haven't made the same gains white LGBTQ folks have.
I'll gladly cede that America is more structurally and culturally anti-black than they are anti-LGBTQ, but that isn't the argument he was making.
This is a pet peeve of mine, but someone actually tell me which millionaire/billionaire actually remained 'cancelled' after being cancelled. As far as I can tell, the only people actually being cancelled are the trans people being fired from their jobs for finding the special distasteful and voicing that publicly.
Papa John?
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1199167890370510848
But fair enough, I haven't seen much of him since.
I wonder why only two I could find were trans men, and almost all were in large cities? Is it that much safer to be a trans man than a trans woman?
It’s a shame there isn’t any details at all around the circumstances of their deaths. I wonder if that could have relevant content at all?
From what I gather, Louis CK and Garrison Keillor are still cancelled (e.g. reduced to releasing stuff on their own personal websites).
Also, the kind of people who get canceled are entertainers and academics, and few if any of those are billionaires. I'm not even sure how "canceling" a billionaire would even work.
So 44 trans people were murdered in 2020, out of a total of 21,570 in the US [0]. Estimates for the trans population range from 0.39% [1] to 0.58% [2].
That's about 2-3x lower than we'd expect, as a population of that size with an equivalent murder rate would have 84-125 homicides per year.
If we zoom in on black trans people and compare them to the black population as a whole, 27 were murdered compared to 9,941 for the black population [3]. Doing a bit of napkin math, and with the assumption that the rate of transgender identification is the same in the black and non-black populations, and using 46.9 million for the black population, we get:
21.2 murders / 100k for the black population
16.2-24.1 murders / 100k for the black trans population (using 0.58% for the first figure, and 0.39% for the second).
So the surprising conclusion seems to be that the trans population has a significantly lower homicide victimization rate compared to the general population, and black trans population has a slightly lower rate than the black population.
And if anything, I'd expect this gap to expand once correcting for age (the trans population skews younger) and the rapid increase in trans identification over the few years.
[0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-a...
[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/
[2] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/transgender...
[3] - https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/cri...
Additionally, a black trans death is precisely what Chappelle used to justify his own monologue.
Analyses like you just did do feel authoritative, but it is important to remember that HRC only began tracking these things in 2013, and given the state of play in the US, I wouldn't expect it to be a complete survey for quite some time.
Quoting from the nih article you cited about the difficulties collecting data:
*Research has shown that transgender individuals around the world and in the United States are exposed to widespread social stigma, discrimination, harassment, and physical and sexual abuse. Compared with the general population, a national survey conducted in the United States in 2008 found that transgender individuals were 4 times more likely to live in extreme poverty, had double the rate of unemployment, and had almost double the rate of being homeless. In terms of health, transgender individuals had 4 times the rate of being HIV-infected and 28% postponed medical care because of discrimination. Particularly alarming is that 41% of survey respondents reported at least 1 suicide attempt. A barrier to understanding social determinants and health disparities faced by transgender people is the under- or nonrepresentation in a range of demographic and health-monitoring activities,5 which may result from a lack of transgender-inclusive data collection with regard to gender identity.*
3,584 female victims in 2020 vs 14,194 males.
Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion.
44/21570 (0.002) becomes 27/3584 (0.0075)
when viewed through the lens of gender.
I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.
> Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion.
I deliberately didn't try to break it down by gender because of the inherent issues with comparing someone who has biologically and socially developed as a male (to varying degrees, eg. someone who begins transitioning at 15 is going to be different than someone who starts at 35) to natal women. It is notable though that if you look at the stats, the victimization rate for black trans women falls in between the stats for black men (much higher) and black women (much lower). It would be interesting to look at other indicators like automobile accidents that show significant gender divergence to see if a similar pattern emerges.
> I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.
Unfortunately I don't think we'll get better stats anytime soon. Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID, but there is no equivalent "trans: Y/N" anywhere. And many trans people would vociferously oppose something like that. The result is that police will likely only include trans identification in case documents if it is relevant, eg. with a hate crime.
Even if a community did have a higher homicide victimization rate than average, it could still punch well above its weight in terms of Twitter mobbing.
You needn't look far to find laws being passed that specifically target and exclude the trans community.
Painting a marginalized community as vicious enough to 'eat their own' paves the way for very ugly rhetoric that we've seen with other marginalized groups the world over. Chappelle especially is smart enough to know this.
And indeed, from reading the comments here and elsewhere, it seems that whatever empathy he attempted to bring to the special, the modal comments on his work looks like this:
'I prefer the old skinny Chapelle. Black white supremacist is a killer. However, I must confess, I agree with him and J.K. Rowling on this one. Being trans women doesn’t make you a woman.'
I don't think anyone is disputing that trans people disproportionately struggle with mental health issues and suicide.
This review seems to be speculating in the same direction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7317390/ Furthermore, compared with trans men, the societal position of trans women is lower (31, 32). In the Netherlands, between 1972 and 2017 suicide rates showed a fluctuating course. Our finding of a slightly decreasing suicide risk in Dutch trans women may confer some hope. Recent studies showed an increase in societal acceptance toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (31), and indications of an increase in social‐economic status over the years (33). ... Although the literature on suicide risk factors is comprehensive, and particular suicidal risk factors like verbal victimization, physical and sexual violence, and the absence of social support (9, 34), may apply for transgender people in all stages of transitioning, it seems clinically highly relevant to understand and explore possible differences in motives and risk factors in the different stages of treatment.
Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID
I am a southern raised white male. I have seen Dave live. I HAD been a fan of his stuff. I had some issues with his comedy in the past but nothing that made me avoid it.
However, this special rang different to me.
This special felt the same as white dudes I have heard my entire life. White dudes who would say racist shit and turn around to say they aren’t racist because they have black friends.
I felt Dave did the exact same with his trans friend. He used that friendship to try to shield his comedy.
Look, Dave doesn’t need our money. He doesn’t need any fucking person supporting him. Dude has so much money it doesn’t matter. So I do wonder why so many people are so desperately trying to defend transphobic comedy routines?
Stand away from the comedian and take a stand on what Dave’s actual views are. Own them yourself and defend those views. I think in 20 years you will look back and realize you held shitty views or at least society will
> I think in 20 years you will look back and realize you held shitty views or at least society will
I think my views 20 years ago were near exactly what they are now. What if it’s yours that change? Then was Chapelle ok again?
What if your or my or his opinion doesn’t matter and everyone should be free to have their own and that is just ok even if someone else thinks it’s wrong?
Yes I believe people can change.
As for his views, he straight up said he was a trans exclusionary radical feminist.
He said it multiple times in the special.
Go look at what that means. He is AGAINST legislation for trans rights. This is no different than white people saying we didn’t need the black civil rights movement.
Let me put it another way, my mom is an old white women who was alive during integration of the schools. She is racist as shit. She has a black friend. If her black friend dies first, she will absolutely be at her friend’s funeral. She loves her black friend. My mom would say her friend is “one of the good” ones. My mom is straight up racist. Having and caring about an individual in a group she is racist against doesn’t mean she isn’t racist.
Dave cared about his friend. He cares about his family. But he said what he is. No one put those words in his mouth. He said he was a Terf
With racism, the racists are denying other people's humanity, based on race. That ideology centres around the notion of a group of humans being somehow subhuman.
This isn't the case with 'terfs' - they're not denying or diminishing anyone's humanity, they're simply saying that whether you're a woman or a man is determined by your biological sex, rather than a proclaimed gender identity.
Anybody who is FOR legislation of "rights" predicated on a non-falsifiable self-proclamation is almost certainly an idiot.
I don't dispute that gender dysphoria is real, it most certainly is. I don't dispute that living this way in a world that doesn't acknowledge who you are is a real bummer.
But advocating for legal recognition of a person's declaration, a word that cannot be objectively falsified, is absolutely a recipe for disaster. For every legitimately gender-dysphoric person, I bet there is a sexual predator rubbing his hands in anticipation for access to womens' spaces. And by what standard can the legal system deny them?
And why stop at gender? What stops me from falsely identifying as Black in order to qualify for scholarships or other programs intended to correct societal imbalances? By what right does a legal system that accepts the premise of subjective declaration as truth stop me from claiming Tribal casino profits or squatting on indigenous land?
It is the very height of idiocy to believe that a system of laws could possibly rest upon non-falsifiable claims.
Does it suck to live with identify disorders of any kind? Yes, absolutely. But should we upend our entire value system of objectivity of law in order to address it? Hell no.
[1] And, again, "cancelled by the mob" is a pretty poor summary.
How so?
She committed suicide after what appears to be a troubled life, months after being criticized by other members of the trans community on Twitter. Unless you have some special knowledge of her motives beyond what was in the note, it seems exploitative to use it as a vehicle for your political views. Similarly, rather than claiming that people who are reacting negatively haven’t watched Chappelle’s special, it’d be better to try to engage intellectually with what they’re actually saying rather than finding an excuse not to.
Dave, by the sounds of it was a kind and gracious friend to Daphne and this was corroborated by her family. He offered her to open for him in a club as well, a great opportunity given his tenure as a comedian. In addition, upon hearing of her passing, setup a trust for her daughter.
The twitter mob on the other hand tried to have her cancelled after she defended him because she knew that he had no ill-intent.
In my opinion, the 1K employees who are walking are doing so on the flimsiest of moral foundations. Dave has done more for Daphne and her family than any of the 1K employees or the twitter mob ever will. Moral outrage is not generous or kind to anyone, period.
(personally have no interest in this controversy, or chappelle, who i find angry and unfunny.)
Presumably the twitter mob is mad (rightly or wrongly - i havent watched the special) about transphobia by Dave in general. It is entirely possible that Dave could be a great friend to Daphne and be transphobic at the same time. You can be friends with a trans person and transphobic at the same time (just like you can be sexist and friends with a woman at the same time, etc). Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
My mom believes she has an immortal soul that is redeemed by Jesus Christ whose body and blood are present in the Eucharist. I disagree. Does this make me a soulphobe who hates Catholics?
[I'm not making any comment on how right the twitter mob is. Haven't seen the commedy special, no idea what's said in it]
Wokeness is a nasty social virus that has infected the USA, and it slowly but surely is causing the USA to implode.
If wokeism wasn't around, they'd find something else to oppress people. Ironically, these people would've been _great_ racists in a different time.
The problem is bullying. I don't know why it's so hard for people to recognize when they agree with the bully, but these sorts of tactics are never acceptable.
It's incredibly damaging to the cause of social justice. These assholes become the de-facto voice/face of the movement they claim to support, and destroy it.
"Woke" white bullies took over the movement, and are once again telling minorities what's good for them and how they should feel, all while alienating any potential converts. It's actually pretty darkly, depressingly hilarious.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danabrownlee/2021/04/19/why-whi...
Understand that by misusing that slang, you are also assisting them in doing the same. People that understand the actual definition correctly expect there is malicious ulterior intent when it is wrongly invoked, like in your earlier comments.
The woke virus is everywhere now and the only thing it means, to people here in the Netherlands at least, is "being absurdly sensitive about anything that could possibly hurt any groups feelings".
He says as much in the special, but the message that the hyper-offended mob seems to miss is that in the end of the special he realizes that Daphne’s trans identity was secondary and frankly unimportant to her identity as a human and comedian. Basically realizing he came to view Daphne pretty much as Daphne wanted to be viewed and how she viewed herself.
The friendship will tolerate what it will, until it can't. I think situations like these occur all the time, but unless one side shows more empathy or understanding, the friendship doesn't tend to last. I believe Dave's friendship with Daphne changed him. I think this is further supported by him saying at the end of the special that he won't be making anymore jokes about LGBTQ+ people until he knows everyone's laughing together. That to me, sounds like someone who was changed by a friendship. Whether he stays true to his words, we'll have to see.
Even if they were a union, they wouldn't be allowed to strike in order to force their employer to deplatform someone, they could only strike to get a contract. If they have a contract, they can't strike.
I wonder at times how many more people the Twitter mob is going to hurt. So few people are even talking about it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/new-pur...
P.S. I didn't watch the special but I did watch a pirated clip (audio only) on YouTube from a show called The Closer - which I assume is the special in question.
Let the 1k go, if they must. They can walk out with their heads high and feeling like they've made a statement. But also let Chappelle continue to earn a living and hold his head high. There's room for both. Let the cancellations cease forthwith.
These sorts of events keep happening. At this point the pattern is very clear: if you hire very left wing employees then you're building the firm on an unexploded bomb. You can't predict what will cause it to go off or when it will occur, but it seems likely that at some point it will. How do you as an executive build robustness to this type of event? You can't simply "do the right thing" because the left's definition of "right thing" changes on a near weekly basis, and is often so outright deranged that doing the right thing would cause you to end up doing quite evil things to other people. Or you can wait then cave, but that just encourages them and means you'll carry the can for the company's performance even though you won't actually have decision making power, and responsibility without power is a terrible place to be.
So there doesn't seem to be an easy fix, except ensuring you never get into that position in the first place by limiting your intake of very left wing employees. In the current environment it's probably enough to simply make yourself unattractive to these people via public announcements and policy, but for example when WhatsApp was rolling out encryption it was doing ideological screening interviews to ensure they wouldn't hire anyone who would freak out over a hardline privacy stance. Such interviews may quietly become more common. At the very least we should not be surprised if we see a raft of Coinbase style "we are a mission focused company" moves in the coming years.
There's a reason why I never post ANYTHING political on my public social media anymore. I keep all my controversial opinions limited to my alternate profiles.
Its funny, its thoughtful and heartbreaking. You can tell he cared for Daphne and they had a insightful relationship.
I feel like the social justice brigade needs to seriously lighten up - maybe don't watch content that sets you off so easily?
Just like everyone has had to do since.. the invention of television and other broadcast media?
That's exactly the threat here, but with an opportunity for the company to alter its decision making if it wants the labor.
This reminds me more of the student protests we used to see, where they wanted to walk out of classes or miss exams but also wanted special treatment so they didn't fail the class.
I've got no problem with not working at a place whose values you dont agree with, but I see this kind of action (and similar things at other tech companies) more as expecting your employer to pay you to undermine them. I could be wrong.
That would be a pretty awesome outcome - Netflix shouldn't have to change their programming (which is generally largely uncontroversial for the most part - I mean when is the last time they truly pushed the envelope? Maybe the OATS STUDIOS and original Black Mirror content?) to satisfy the permanently dissatisfied members of these new-age social movements that attempt to force people to say things that they don't agree with for fear of getting 'cancelled' among other outcomes that are socially negative.
Even more awesome if they filmed it and had Dave Chappelle standing outside to roast them as they were escorted out.
They work at FAANG. Pretty sure they'll be able to get new jobs very quickly.
I suspect people involved with work stoppages who aren't protected via a union are keenly aware of the possibility of being fired and have deemed it worth the risk.
> This reminds me more of the student protests we used to see, where they wanted to walk out of classes or miss exams but also wanted special treatment so they didn't fail the class.
Umm, why not compare it to just a normal labour duspute strike action? This is literally a text book example of the type of action organized labour takes when its mad about something.
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of forethought that humans apply when following the herd. Just look at all the Jan 6 people who are completely floored that there might be consequences to their actions.
They just didn't see the double standard coming.
That's what makes it so good for both parties: Netflix would get rid of employees who are holding the company back, and the employees could easily find new places to work. Seems very mutually beneficial.
> This is literally a text book example of the type of action organized labour takes when its mad about something.
It's not, really. Strikes are usually about workers: their pay, their conditions, their environment.
Rightly or wrongly, they seem to think netflix did something morally wrong (i haven't watched the show in question, so not making any judgements on validity). People who work for "bad" companies are often seen as "bad", so it does affect the employees.
More to the point, isn't the important bit that employees are angry and in agreement, not what they are angry about? It seems pretty dystopian to me to say only some grievences are legit.
Anyways, there's also other examples of historical strikes over moral issues. Googling found me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Longshoremen%27s...
I think companies are acutely aware and growingly suspicious of employee activism. Would you want to hire an activist for your organization? It would be a red flag to me as the activist employees could second guess any decisions made at any level of the organization and work to organize to cause a disruption. It's just not an effective way to run a business
Maybe if you're curing cancer or something, but for most tech workers working on some generic CRUD app, they pay lip service to being motivated by the "mission", but settle for something mildly interesting that hopefully isn't actively doing evil in the world.
Your employees trade time and skill for money. Hearts and souls is a much less common trade.
In most places i have worked, the mission has been some high minded rhetoric about how we're going to change the world for the better that is really disconnected from what we actually do.
If you want to use HN as intended—for intellectual curiosity—then you're welcome, but ideological agendas are the opposite of that, irrespective of which ideology.
You may not be interested in any ideology, but Ideology is surely interested in what you believe. That world where internet was for intellectual curiosity and not ideology battle at every step, is long gone and never coming back.
That's a very different thing than this of course, which is based around the idea, its not worth it to fire them all.
Letting people watch what they want is the democratic position that benefits society at large.
If an individual employee doesn't like their job, they should quit and find a different one. If a large portion don't like it, then a labour dispute is one possible way to try and resolve the situation.
/s
I worked at a retail job briefly after high school and it was a joke that I had to pay union due by law in the state of Maryland.
Software engineers are politically probably one of the strongest positioned labor groups in modern history, up their with probably high finance and heirs of huge fortunes. The fact of the matter is that most people don't want to work the vast majority of union jobs and simultaneously, corporations are willing to offshore many of these labor requirements in part due to the cost burden. Sure, management takes home a lot, but honestly I'm unsympathetic to most union industries and I shouldn't have to pay another tax to some obscure group to handle issues.
also, it’s a fallacy that the senior managers of an organization (at least successful ones) “run” it. at best, they have outsize influence.
[I'm not a fan of cencorship either]
Same thing with the companies, they hire people to do work just like people hire other people. If hired people don't want to work - that's fine, just let them go. I am pretty content with this way of society and don't see how changing it can make it any better.
The person who leaked confidential data - yes, i could see that being a red flag in hiring.
I don't think we've reached the state (yet) where firms are going to be keeping blacklists of activists.
But we're certainly heading in that direction as techies try to force employers into more extreme stances. Dave Chappelle is a popular guy with broad mainstream appeal, and it's incredibly arrogant for Netflix employees to try to deplatform him, or to try to dictate what Netflix, a company with a global reach, can show to a worldwide audience.
And I think we are going to see some mass firings and circulation of blacklists in at least some of the FAANGS before people wake up and realize they are no longer in college protesting some speaker they think makes them "unsafe". For these types of salaries, some professionalism is expected, and long term employers will demand it.
I also think for a large demographic it will make Netflix a more interesting employeer, not less.
I'm in talks with a FAANG company now and this is an actual worry that I have but cannot discuss with my point of contact, that I will be canceled shortly after I'm hired either because of my friends, my views or something I said half a life ago.
Isn’t that explicitly illegal in the Us? Lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
The people they terminate would even be ineligible for unemployment benefits since they admitted to slacking off at work, easily substantiating a termination for cause (and hence saving a Netflix some money by keeping their unemployment insurance premiums lower).
This is a good point.
There's likely a huge amount of content on Netflix that offends a lot of different people and groups. It's your choice to not watch, not subscribe, or not work for them.
There are constructive ways to work with your employer but if you're going to go this route, you better be ready for them to dismiss you.
Maybe I'll start checking Netflix open job boards. There my be some openings soon.
The employees would go on to complain about being improperly let go. This is what happened to Google AI Ethicist Timnit Gebru [0]. She wrote a very public letter demanding changes or she'll resign and Google took her up on the offer. If you go through her twitter[1] you can see she made the firing into her identity now even though it happened nearly a year ago now. It's kind of sad
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/3/22150355/google-fires-tim...
great byline, surely a hill to die on as opposed to real credentials. Can't remember what this is from but this quote always feels super applicable to these times: "World's gone mad, going off the grid. over"
As with the threat itself, probably nothing unless someone else said something about it that I felt called for a response.
There's a long line of people who can provide the same labor to Netflix without the hysteria, so a parting of ways would be a pareto improving outcome.
And the next series of specials that Chappelle sells will have an increase in viewership because of the controversy these activist employees and stupid media outrage has created from this one. Netflix knows this and will want a chance at being the provider of that content.
Do you mean that it's easy to say "I quit," or that it's easy to kiss your next paychecks goodbye with no other approved recourse, despite the fact that you were employed by a company that you and thousands of others saw as perpetuating injustices toward a minority?
While I don't agree with the aims of the employees in question, I should point out that unions came about because your advice does not work. The only way to stand a chance against organized capital is with organized labor. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28603398
AS long as their tactics keep working (and they do since everybody is submitting to their will), I don't see that changing.
Doesn’t that just prove his point about the double standard and culture of victimhood and success in the trans movement?
This all seems to highlight the problem he’s bringing to the forefront.
The second thing to note is they fired an organizer of this protest claiming that they leaked how well this special did (broke even basically) just a couple days ago.
This is obviously going to have a chilling effect within the company no matter what the intent of the special or the executives was.
More broadly, Chappelle seems to have a lot of empathy for his trans friend, but the actual effect seems to have been a fresh supply of TERF ammunition for the next few weeks. The 'discourse' around this is pure poison, and he probably could have predicted this based on how the last special went.
Were they invited to the meeting, or did they just acquire a link? Just because I find your conference call number doesn't give me any inherent right to sit in on it.
I'd be extra-shocked if something like that happened at my workplace, which is similar in size to Netflix.
Regardless, since you asked, Netflix backpedalled and reinstated her in writing. https://twitter.com/RainofTerra/status/1448097310026747908
Speaking for myself, when a director who is also attending a meeting sends me a zoom link, that's an invitation to attend.
Edit: More context, it was just a friggin stream: https://twitter.com/RainofTerra/status/1449667391865044994
If you want to back up your claim of 'crashing', please cite something other than Netflix PR's quote to journalists before the reinstatement letter.
[1]: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflix-d...
> "At least one thousand Netflix employees are expected to participate in a virtual walkout to protest Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ recent comments in support of Dave Chappelle’s latest special, The Closer, according to a current staffer who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter."
This should probably be the main article linked in this thread.
Anyways according to wikipedia Netflix has just over 12k employees, so 1k+ walkout would be 8%+ walkout which would be pretty significant.
It would be interesting to see how many actual Netflix employees are outraged enough by a comedy routine to walk out on their jobs.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/12/22723592/netflix-trans-e...
So ultimately, the meta view on all this is, yes, lets have a conversation. Maybe its a heated one, but lets not "cancel" people while were at it. Let the free-markets determine who should be cancelled.
What would that look like though?
I think there's a somewhat valid conversation to be had about cancel culture, but this point comes up over and over, and I'm constantly wondering: if people criticizing speech in public places like Twitter isn't the free market, and Netflix employees collectively advocating that they don't want to host the speech isn't the free market, and if users boycotting or voting with their wallets isn't the free market, and if advertisers pushing for higher standards on the platforms they're advertising on isn't the free market, and if platform-holders and publishers deciding what content they want to promote isn't the free market, then what is the free market?
When we talk about cancel culture, a lot of the mechanisms of canceling use free market actions; freedom of association, the right to criticize, the right to filter and to share filters with other people, the right to choose how we spend our money and time. And it's valid to look at the free market of speech and say that sometimes it's overly harsh or that it censors the wrong people or that it can be intolerant, but I don't see how it's possible to simultaneously say that the marketplace of ideas is the correct way to sort out good and bad speech, and also that people being mean on Twitter or calling for boycotts is fundamentally the wrong way to tackle conflict.
What do people think the marketplace of ideas is, and how should it act? When the marketplace of ideas deems an idea unpopular or bad, should it still be given equal weight and equal investment and promotion alongside other ideas, even though the marketplace doesn't want it?
That's not how the real economic marketplace works; in the economic marketplace if you can't convince people to buy your product, then your company dies and investors stop giving you money and putting you on store shelves. Nobody says that it's a violation of the free market if people badmouth a company online and stores stop carrying their products as a result. Nobody argues that I'm "canceling" Facebook when I tell people to stop using it, or when I argue that Facebook's future VR products are likely to be bad just by virtue of being made by Facebook.
What's different about the marketplace of ideas? Is it that Netflix has too much power and it's a pseudo-monopoly over entertainment? I can buy that argument for situations like Facebook or the Apple app store, but I don't really buy it for Netflix.
Certainly not through 1000 Netflix employees representing the free-market.
Netflix refuses to carry an awful lot of content. Is it a violation of the free market of speech that they're not streaming everyone else's responses to David Chappelle? I mean, I personally haven't been contacted by them to make a video with them about this debate, does that mean Netflix is censoring my voice and subverting the marketplace of ideas by refusing to stream my videos? The problem is that if we go too far down the road of deciding Netflix is violating the marketplace of ideas by choosing not to host certain ideas on a curated service, we end up with really silly conclusions.
I'd be a bit more charitable to this idea if we were talking about a general platform like Youtube, or if we were talking about a platform with outsized monopoly-levels of control over video content. But it's absurd to say that the marketplace of ideas means Netflix is obligated to pay people to produce content for them and to promote that content; that would be a huge violation of Freedom of Association, and it would just be completely unworkable as a business model.
And if Netflix isn't obligated to pay for and host everyone's content, then who else has more right to have input into what Netflix does host than its employees, owners, and stakeholders?
Consider -- just for a moment -- that you are not Dave Chappelle.
But if you were an entertainer with his appeal and fanbase, then I don't doubt that Netflix would reach out to you to try to sign you to some specials.
In other words, Netflix is not a pez-dispenser of views on political issues. It's an entertainment platform for the entire world. So no, extremist groups within Netflix don't get to stand between Chapelle and his audience, deplatforming him just because they have a job at Netflix.
And who decides what that line is? Netflix, right?
Netflix ultimately gets to decide what its standards are for the content it hosts, that's the only sensible conclusion we can draw. It's the only setup that makes sense in a free market, companies get to choose what products they produce and host.
Similarly, Netflix can look at feedback from its customers and other clients, and it can look at feedback from its workers, and it can take that feedback into account when making decisions. Just like it does for literally every other business decision that it makes.
Yes. And I got news for you -- the rest of the world thinks these Netflix protestors are crazy, power hungry authoritarians. This special is popular, as is Chapelle.
> it can look at feedback from its workers,
In terms of what netflix shows, workers are not more privileged than any other netflix customer, unless they are the ones hired by Netflix to select content. If you want a collective editorialship role, then go to work for a cooperative, or seek a job with that role. But if you accepted a job as release engineer, then no, you don't get to decide which comedians Netflix signs just because you are a release engineer for Netflix. That's something that workers know when they sign on.
Do the workers get to decide whether they work for Netflix?
If, theoretically, they threatened to stop working, would that fall within the bounds of their freedom of association under the 1st Amendment?
They could however form a union first and demand a labor contract in which every Netflix employee has the right to veto content shown on Netflix. Then they could go on strike if the union fails to agree on a contract, saying that this "right to deplatform" is a non-negotiable demand.
That is the equivalent of what is going on here, which should explain why the rest of the world thinks this is a terrible idea. Anyways, good luck with that.
Of course they do. As a worker, I have a right to threaten to quit during a negotiation process. As a consumer, I have a right to threaten to cancel a subscription or stop buying a product. I'm not sure where anyone would get the idea that those kinds of actions aren't allowed in a free market.
> and they certainly don't have a right to strike, not being in a union or even trying to form a union.
I also really don't understand what's meant by "right to strike" here. I'm not aware of any strike laws in the US that ban employees of entertainment companies from striking. Without a union, Netflix workers can't call an official strike, but they can still legally refuse to work, and Netflix can respond as it sees fit.
If they don't have a right to do what they're doing, then Netflix can try pressing legal charges against them or at the least can fire them.
Every other comedian I know is doing fine as well.
Even the "canceled" comedians seem to be doing just fine.
I feel this is a gross generalization, are we talking about CK Lewis or Daphne? What's the line for doing fine, losing a year of gigs, working in another area, not dead, not in a mental institution?
This "cancel" culture is unproductive and pitting people against people for misunderstandings that wouldn't hold water in real life.
Either way, it's also really really dark and disturbing for you to attribute Daphne's suicide to "cancelation".
That is what I need to see. Does Netflix have a spine to fight back against such nonsense?
Very confusing, it was Chapelle's final special with Netflix, and it has already aired. What would the 1k employees like?
They want it removed from the platform altogether
Then at least they can see themselves as heroes in their "I'm the main character" stories about how "politically active" they were when they write their books.
Er, no he didn't.
And the 'Team TERF' thing has at least 7 or 8 minutes of context around it.
This too will pass.
I haven't watched it, and have no specific opinion, but I certainly do know that many times when I’ve seen characterization of objectionable content in media it wasn't supported by a reasonable viewing of the media.
'preteen sexual exploration' doesn't need to be a socially acceptable form of entertainment
Dave will be fine. Netflix will be fine.
I wish their was more uproar over other stuff that's on Netflix that is way more offensive, in my opinion.
If anything it should be an indictment of how he treats his audience in 2021. There are plenty of hillarious trans jokes to be made but He needs to do a better job of reading the room. When you punch down in your sets, its bullying not satire.
If these people use Dave as the beacon for anti-trans opinions, the person who created a trust fund for the daughter of trans person who killed herself, maybe they aren't that good at anti-trans, just saying.
This, this is what I don't agree, the myopic idea where people deserve help or spite depending on some tribal characteristic.