Netflix Reportedly Rebuffs Employees Seeking to Curtail Content

A number of the company's employees staged a walk out earlier this year demanding that a Dave Chappelle comedy special be dropped over "transphobic" jokes.

Netflix has updated its corporate culture rules for the first time in five years after employees challenged its content, Variety has reported. The new rules reportedly tell employees that they are not entitled to censor the platform's content, while the "Artistic Expression" section dubbed "Netflix Culture – Seeking Excellence" elaborates that no content will be removed, even if workers find it "harmful.”

"If you find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you", the document allegedly goes on to warn.

According to Variety, Netflix is aware that not all people will agree with the platform’s entire content, however the US firm has opted to address the issue by representing a wide berth of views and types of content balanced by ratings, warnings and parental controls, instead of catering to the tastes of a specific group of people and censoring "specific artists or voices”. The company alleges that it allows users to decide which content is appropriate for them, while permitting the freedom of artistic expression for content-creators.

"Entertaining the world is an amazing opportunity and also a challenge because viewers have very different tastes and points of view. So we offer a wide variety of TV shows and movies, some of which can be provocative", the company's memo was reported to say.

While Netflix did not provide the reasons behind the changes to its corporate culture, Variety alleged that they were prompted by a relatively recent employee backlash for not taking down a Dave Chappelle special dubbed "The Closer". Some workers staged a walkout over the company's refusal to drop the stand-up episode over alleged "transphobic" jokes.

In “The Closer”, the comedian made tongue-in-cheek comments that hurting a gay person's feelings was far more dangerous for one's career than killing an African-American, referring to the "cancelling" of rapper DaBaby. This, and several other jokes about the LGBTQ community, landed Chappelle in hot water despite him repeatedly clarifying that he supports the LGBTQ community throughout the special.

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