Netflix vs. The People
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #143 ❤️
This week we’re taking a look at Netflix and their latest marketing disaster, made even more unusual by the fact that they very rarely get it wrong.
We’re also answering the following questions - Should you be selling your data? Can you have a gap in your CV? And what is the AI industry hiding? Plus the new influencing trend that you can actually follow without spending any money, wow - that’s new…
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Have Netflix Started A War With Their Customers?
Netflix made headlines recently for announcing they would be cracking down on password sharing, and then swiftly taking it back by saying that the announcement was posted in error.
For a company who once used the phrase “love is sharing a password” as a marketing ploy, the 180 on their company persona rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way, with the Google search term “cancel Netflix account” jumping by more than 733% after the announcement, and Twitter being awash with people calling Netflix out for being “petty”.
Surely in the current era of seemingly unlimited streaming options, companies would be fighting for users rather than alienating them?
Apparently Netflix’s password crackdown may be more linked to the way they attract advertisers – that is with proof of how many people are watching which shows. While apparently password sharing costs Netflix six billion dollars annually, they know that clamping down on password sharing isn’t going to add that amount to their profits. However, advertisers could be paying almost six billion annually by 2027 – but to get them, they need proof of how many people are watching. Could that be the reasoning behind this seemingly out of left field decision?
To make this a little bit more complicated, the most valuable demographic to advertisers remains young adults – the same demographic that would be MOST affected by a crackdown on password sharing, AND the most likely to cancel their Netflix accounts just to be “petty”.
Have Netflix gotten too big for their boots? Let’s see.
#2 - Should You Be Selling Your Data?
Opportunities to sell or trade your personal data are becoming more available and more popular, with some companies offering the opportunity to earn up to 50 dollars a month (apparently). A new crop of start-ups are helping brands ask for your preferences in exchange for a personalised experience, cash, discounts or even gift cards.
For example, Tapestri, a Chicago start-up, offers users cash in exchange for near-constant access to their locations. The CEO markets it as them paying for your Netflix bill and your lattes, claiming to pay users from around eight to twenty-five dollars a month. That’s not a lot of lattes!
While start-ups like this claim to be paying you for something that others would essentially be stealing from you anyway, this isn’t exactly true. What’s actually happening is that advertisers are panicking as traditional sources of data dry up. Apple shook the industry when it started allowing users to opt out of some tracking, and Google has announced their plan to get rid of cookies, not to mention the EU’s GDPR limits on collecting personal data.
And the illusion of having more control over your data is also just that, an illusion. What these companies are doing is just making the exchange more visible, they can still sell it to whoever they want, i.e. your employer, your insurance company or any old lunatic online, you’re simply getting a cut of the deal.
Basically the answer to the question is, probably not, but just like your kidneys, technically your body parts/data is yours to do with as you wish.
#3 - Sabbaticals Are Back
Until recently, a gap on your CV was seen as a red flag for employers, but as with most things in our working lives, that seems to have changed since Covid burst into our lives uninvited many moons ago.
With the wave of layoffs in 2020 followed by the infamous Great Resignation™️ and the huge downsizing of the tech industry we’re currently witnessing, employment discontinuity is becoming increasingly normalised.
Many people took time post pandemic to re-evaluate life and career choices, with others taking voluntary breaks for mental health purposes in a time where burnout is becoming more commonly talked about and in a context of increased understanding of the importance of mental health in the workplace.
Add to that the fact that many workers who’ve been laid off received generous redundancy packages and therefore didn’t need to rush back to work, plus the battle to get the best talent back after the Great Resignation, and the times they are-a-changing - attitudes as well.
Whereas back in the day after the 2008 financial crash, people felt a need to cover the gaps in their resumes – showing itself as a surge of CVs showing people in steady, full-time employment suddenly followed by ‘freelance consultant’. Spoiler alert – freelance meant unemployed.
Now, an employment gap is no longer necessarily something to conceal. On LinkedIn you can even highlight it on your profiles as a ‘career break’, and detail any newly acquired skills or life experiences.
More openness in the workplace, certainly coming from recruitment, is always welcome.
#4 - AI vs. The Planet
While we’ve been getting all excited about the new developments in the AI world and what they could mean for our future, there’s a slightly less fun side to the race to build high performance AI tools.
Building high-performance, AI-powered search engines is likely to require a dramatic rise in computing power, meaning a massive increase in the amount of energy that tech companies require and hence in the amount of carbon they emit. In layman’s terms – better AI means more pollution.
Training the data models used by AI takes a huge amount of computational power. While both OpenAI and Google have kept the computing cost of their products to themselves, thirdy party research analysis estimates that the training of GPT-3, which ChatGPT is partly based on, led to emissions of over 550 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is the same as one person making 550 roundtrips between New York and San Francisco.
While apparently not as bad as the textile or transportation industry, computer scientist Carlos Gomez-Rodriguez insists that AI can be a significant contributor to emissions.
Just as crypto mining used enormous amounts of energy, the more abstract nature of the emissions created by computer processing means pollution isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when we think of these sectors, unlike the transport industry where you can literally see the fumes, their effect on the environment can pass under the radar.
#5 - (In)fluencing Is Out
De-influencing is in.
The newest TikTok trend of de-influencing goes against the grain of what we’ve seen on social media for the last few years by telling you NOT to buy the next biggest trend.
This turn away from consumerism and mimicking the big influencers by buying the newest lipstick or THE hair tool that everyone is raving about online even though it costs 600 dollars and doesn’t seem to do much (naming no names *cough* Dyson *cough*) seems to be coming from a place of burn-out. People are just sick of the influencer culture.
In the same way that there was a backlash against photoshopped ads and face tuning, people are sick of following influencers and feeling the need to free themselves from the chains of the Instagram algorithms.
Constantly being sold something is just getting a bit tiring for social media users. Whereas once product recommendations online were more or less sincere, we are now becoming more familiar with the way influencers are used by brands to push products, and realising that this person is not your friend but just another marketing branch of L’Oréal, Apple, or the aforementioned Dyson.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Tik Tok’s Secret Menus Are The Bane Of Fast Food Workers Lives
Picture this, you’re at work at Starbucks or McDonalds just minding your own business, when some yuppie comes in and shoves a viral TikTok video in your face of an excessively complicated order that you’ve never heard of, you don’t know the price of, that’s not on the menu and that’s going to take you an age to make.
Well, workers are rebelling against your nonsense. They say they’re not getting paid enough to be your personal chef and to be honest, fair enough.
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