The streaming platform Netflix has directed its ‘woke’ staff to either tolerate different points of view or find another job if they disagree with the content they find “provocative”. According to reports, Netflix has sent a memo to left-wing ‘woke’ employees asking them not to ‘censor’ content that they disagree with even if they find it ‘provocative’.
The warning letter comes after Netflix executives and junior workers had clashed over remarks made by stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle about transgender people. Last year, Netflix employees had staged a walkout after Dave Chappelle made ‘transphobic comments’ in his special ‘The Closer’. The special had incensed the ‘Woke’ camp, and ‘Woke’ employees at Netflix had staged a walkout in protest.
However, their demands to remove the programme were rejected by Netflix’s bosses Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, who argued that such a move would have impinged on artistic expression.
In the latest memo, the Netflix management appears to have formalised this stance in an internal memo. This memo comes just weeks after the streaming platform had disclosed that they had a drop of 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of 2022. Netflix has recently witnessed a massive slump in the growth of its subscriber base. The investors have lost a whopping $45 billion in market value due to the aspersion that the company was going to enter a period of slow growth.
The company has also updated its webpage on Netflix Culture with the content of the memo, and under the section Artistic Expression, it says, “as employees we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values.”
The memo says, “Entertaining the world is an amazing opportunity and also a challenge because viewers have very different tastes and points of view. Not everyone will like — or agree with — everything on our service”.
Further, the memo read, “While every title is different, we approach them based on the same set of principles: we support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with; we program for a diversity of audiences and tastes; and we let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.”
Netflix has updated its culture memo to include a section called “artistic expression,” which appears to be a response to the criticism around Dave Chappelle’s specials. https://t.co/yRjd89Xwvq pic.twitter.com/flsvMNYDvP
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 12, 2022
Bluntly stating that employees who disagree with titles being streamed by the company can leave their jobs, the memo states, “Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”
It is important to note that on January 20, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings had expressed his ‘frustration’ during an investor call over the slow growth of the video streaming company in the Indian market.
“In our experience in Brazil, it was brutal for the first couple of years. We thought we’d never break even. I know we’ve got this great business. The great news is that in every single other major market, we’ve got the flywheel spinning. The thing that frustrates us is why haven’t we been more successful in India”, he had said.
This development also comes in the backdrop of Elon Musk’s recent statement where he had accused Netflix of becoming infected with a “woke mind virus”.
