In Mercatornet, Jon Miltimore has an interesting piece on Netflix and censorship. Not unfamiliar, but it has the potential to be a trend worth watching.
Netflix delivers salvo for free speech in 9 short words to employees: ‘Netflix may not be the best place for you’
After a tough year, the streaming giant has decided to back freedom of expression
In the wake of a brutal earnings report and a sea of controversy, Netflix recently delivered a blunt message to employees.
If you don’t like the content Netflix produces, you are free to leave.
Two linked trends are identified as the reasons Netflix arrived in this situation.
How Netflix arrived here stems from a pair of cultural trends. The first is the mainstreaming of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), an idea that says corporations must be socially accountable to its customers and stakeholders—by getting involved...
The second trend is the rise of fragility and censorship, which in recent years has steadily chipped away at free expression and speech. Around 2016, social media companies like Twitter, which had formerly described itself as a bastion of free speech, began to aggressively police speech on its platforms. By 2020, corporations like Coca-Cola, Hersey, Verizon, and others were boycotting Facebook as part of a Stop Hate For Profit campaign designed to spur more aggressive “content moderation.”
To my mind the rise of fragility is potentially significant because ultimately fragility is a somewhat undesirable personal attribute. It is not associated with ideas of strong, independent people making their own way in the world. For those who are not fragile it is worth reading the whole thing.
5 comments:
It's a very important trend, but I think "fragility" might be the wrong term for it. Lots of these crybullies are not fragile. They are aggressive manipulators who see an opportunity to score a win. They wait around for someone to say something they can disagree with, and then feign righteous indignation based on a spurious psychological pain.
Undoubtedly, there are some people who are genuinely offended by everyday speech and the output of corporations. I concede that some people have raised a generation of thin-skinned youngsters who get really upset by what mentally healthy people could just shrug off. But even they are not "fragile". If they were, they would just go to pieces rather than aggressively press their case and demand retribution. Perhaps we need a new word which encapsulates this combination of being simultaneously thin-skinned and aggressively sanctimonious.
Just 'mean' perhaps? It refers to their nature, not their politics, and suggests that they are uncharitable to others.
Or maybe 'malicious'?
Sam - I agree, although to a certain extent, acting fragile could become socially tedious in much the same way as being fragile. Possibly more so if seen to be artificial. I'm not sure about a better word though.
DJ - or just 'woke' which seems to be acquiring negative connotations. Maybe 'malicious' work though, because it links to political malice.
Or -
I'll thcream and I'll thcream until I'm thick.
It is an old ploy.
Doonhamer - and it still works.
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