The last few months have not been the best for Netflix, the video game giant. Diffusion that changed the business of distributing and displaying audiovisual content. After massive loss of subscribers announced last month, which is behind the devaluation of 70% of the company’s shares since the beginning of the year, the company announced today that it will lay off more than 150 workers. the news was early Tuesday evening by the CNBC. THE Hollywood journalist also says that 70 posts in the entertainment area were also turned off.
The positions concerned, specify the site from CNBC, correspond to “less than 2%” of the 11,000 service workers” and focus mainly on the company’s services in the United States. In a press release quoted by the American chain, a representative of the company explains that, following a “slowdown in profit growth”, Netlix was forced to “slow down” “cost growth”. “These changes are mainly driven by business needs and do not reflect individual performance, which makes them particularly difficult, say goodbye to such good colleagues,” the official continued.
The company recently announced that its current strategy to counter subscriber loss is to increase subscription prices and regulate sharing of subscribers. Passwordsand admitted that it is still considering inserting advertisements into new subscription packages with lower than normal prices, which is unprecedented in its history.
But Netflix isn’t the only tech giant to downsize, CNBC adds, citing layoffs and slowing hiring at companies like Meta, Amazon and Uber.
Last Friday the The Wall Street Journal had announced Netflix has updated its employee guidelines for the first time since 2017. This after last year, there have been internal protests over the transphobic content of Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy specials. The service added new rules and emphasized that “not everyone will like – or agree – with everything” on the platform: “All content is different, but we approach it based on same principles: we support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with; we program for a diversity of audiences and tastes; we let viewers decide what is right for them, rather than asking Netflix to censor specific artists or voices. Some employees may therefore be required to “work on content that they perceive as harmful”. “If you have difficulty supporting our variety of content, Netflix may not be the best place for you,” the company concludes.
Still on the controversial subject of censorship, we recall the concession made in 2019 by Netflix to the Saudi government, which asked the service to withdraw an episode of talk show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj criticism of Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A few months later, Reed Hastings, the company’s CEO, told a conference that Netflix “was not in charge of telling the truth to those in power, but entertainment.”