[HN Gopher] Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) - Netflix for black p...
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Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) - Netflix for black people
Hi HN! We are Uzo and Iyanu, the founders of BlackOakTV
(https://beta.blackoak.tv). BlackOakTV is a subscription video
platform serving black audiences by making it easy for them to
watch TV shows and movies that feature black stories and
characters. Nearly three-quarters of Black people want to watch
more content that portrays their lives and experiences (Target
Market News, 2018), but they can't find enough of it, and when they
do find it, it usually hasn't gotten the budget or development
resources that more mainstream content does. When I grew up in the
90s, it seemed like black people had a relatively high number of TV
shows to choose from like "Martin", "Living Single," and "The Fresh
Prince of Bel-Air". It felt good. I felt represented.
Unfortunately, it turns out the 90s were an aberration, and over
the next 2 decades, black content would become widely
underrepresented in Hollywood. Having watched too much TV as a kid,
I foolishly decided to get into media as an adult. I worked as a
journalist, producer, media strategist and executive, loving to
make content, but always being reminded that my culture wasn't
getting the representation it deserved, and always hoping to do
something about that someday. When I started at YouTube and
Google, I thought I would finally be able to help change that; I
thought the internet and the world's biggest video source would
bring black people the same awesome experience they were creating
for other viewers and creators. Unfortunately, that wasn't the
case. Black millennial users of YouTube, despite using it more than
any other millennial group, often expressed that the comments on
YouTube could make it an uncomfortable place. And black creators
often did not get the same chance at success that their mainstream
counterparts did, leading to some black creators filing lawsuits
against YouTube. Despite YouTube's good intentions, systemic biases
in how non-black users treated black creators, as well as the
economic realities of Black people only representing 10% of the
U.S. audience, have led to YouTube never doing quite enough to
address this. So I left YouTube, and Iyanu and I decided to
address this on our own. The creator economy is booming, with black
influencers among the most creative, and black consumers often
among the most energetic and prolific users. I knew that energy
could be harvested into a platform that gave black viewers the
content they want, and creators the chance to make it. So we
started BlackOakTV with the goal of delivering the most, and the
best, Black content possible. We license content from indie
creators and make it available in one place, so Black viewers have
a one-stop shop for the content they want to see. We're also
creating/commissioning original content, to raise the bar on
quality. We're different from Netflix in that our focus on black
content means we can identify new black voices earlier, make it
easier to find black content on our platform (hint: it's
everywhere!), and better serve the diversity of black viewers
rather than just treating Black people as one single niche. As for
the other streaming services targeting black users, our main
differentiator from them will eventually be our product. Iyanu is
an amazing engineer, and with his prowess, our product will provide
a unique viewing experience, full of the features black viewers
want. But Netflix's business model is where we aim to be a lot
like them. Because Netflix changed media not just because of how
they made their content available, but because for the first time
in TV history, the aggregator of the content owned a direct
relationship with the end user--and that's why streaming is so
valuable. And it's why we want to have a product that makes users
want to view our content exclusively through our properties. Today,
users can go to blackoak.tv or download one of our apps, and after
subscribing to our 7-day free trial, they can watch all of our
content, on-demand, simply by scrolling through our catalog of
shows and films. And because we appreciate the HN community taking
time to hear our story, for a short period of time, we're making
some of our original black TV shows available for free on our site
and in our apps on iOS, Android, Roku and Amazon Firestick. You
don't even have to sign up, just find the "free section" on our
homepage or click the following link:
https://beta.blackoak.tv/categories/free-episodes. With that, I
welcome any feedback, ideas, or experiences similar to ours. It's
been very challenging trying to enter a quickly maturing business
with a lot of competition from public companies, and while we think
we have some of the answers, your suggestions, thoughts and advice
would be greatly appreciated!
Author : Uzo0312
Score : 318 points
Date : 2021-08-06 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
| jb775 wrote:
| Something tells me that if something labeled as "Netflix for
| white people" popped up, it _might_ be an issue.
| afavour wrote:
| I can't help but feel like everyone commenting here read the
| headline, brushed straight past the lengthy explanation and went
| directly to outrage in the comment box.
|
| This is a streaming service set up to elevate content by black
| creators, to make up for the fact that the mainstream media
| under-represents those people. I'm struggling to see the outrage
| on a cultural level and on a startup level I can absolutely
| imagine there is a market for this.
|
| I'm going to guess that "Netflix for black people" is not going
| to be the tagline the business will advertise itself on, it was
| chosen by an early-stage startup to catch your eye and make you
| think about the ways in which Netflix does _not_ serve black
| people.
| ggggtez wrote:
| If you go to an Italian restaurant where the waiter tells you
| about the fine wine of his home country for five minutes, and
| then offers you a free sample and you find out it's a grape
| juice box... Then you would rightly feel outraged.
|
| The problem isn't the idea, is being sold and marketed as
| something it's not. This isn't like BET. This is... I don't
| know what it is. But it's not a Netflix competitor with classic
| black talent sitcoms.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| How are we selling and marketing ourselves as something we're
| not? No, we're not Netflix today--I think that's somewhat
| inherent in the fact that we're a startup here on HN. But we
| say that we're working with indie filmmakers and content, not
| high-budget Hollywood productions, so I think we admit where
| we're at.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Hi, Black SWE here. Grandparent isn't making a sensible
| argument by any means and is largely grasping for straws to
| code their outrage ("fine wine... but grape juice box" is
| particularly telling). Wish you all the best.
| ggggtez wrote:
| That's great and all but are you telling me you consider
| the programming on this website to be on par with the
| best sitcoms of the 80s and 90s?
|
| If you read the OP, it's a blatant bait and switch.
| samstave wrote:
| As long as they aren't as douchey as /r/BlackPeopleTwitter
| (which is a racist subreddit that BANS anyone who is not black
| -- then more power to them. If they are promoting Black Content
| Creators and stories and shows, great! if they are looking to
| EXCLUDE non-black people from accessing their service/content,
| then fuck 'em.
|
| /r/BlackPeopleTwitter mods are douchebags.
| zwieback wrote:
| 100% agree. How is it racist to offer something as a business,
| it's not like it's a government or other public project. We
| already have BET so this is just a similar offering in a
| different format. "Netflix for black people" might not be a
| good choice as a tagline, though.
| runbathtime wrote:
| It is a double standard, not only would the mods not allow a
| post of a company that says its mission is to create the
| Netflix for white ppl, but YC would never dream of funding
| it.
|
| I am all for discrimination, but you have to let everyone
| discriminate and currently whites can't.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > How is it racist to offer something as a business, it's not
| like it's a government or other public project
|
| I've seen people suggest that censorship is only censorship
| if the government does it, but suggesting that racism is only
| racism when the government does it too is a first.
| snakeboy wrote:
| > but suggesting that racism is only racism when the
| government does it too is a first.
|
| I think you've misunderstood this post. This is less like a
| "white's only" restaurant, and more like an Italian food
| restaurant. It's supporting a cultural niche, not excluding
| another.
| skyde wrote:
| not exactly because unlike show such as " The Fresh
| Prince of Bel-Air" this new niche is show that say the
| white males are evil and responsible for everyone
| problem. It's like KKK but i'm reverse
| namdnay wrote:
| Now I'm European, so maybe I'm not in the right cultural
| mindset for this, but your comparison really highlights
| what is problematic for me: based on someone's skin
| colour you are determining their culture/heritage. What
| does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican, apart
| from the melatonin in their skin? Why would they have
| similar tastes in media?
| Osmose wrote:
| > based on someone's skin colour you are determining
| their culture/heritage.
|
| People can have more than one cultural background, and
| American "black culture" is the common cultural heritage
| around the experience of being black in America, which
| has a lot of broad commonalities regardless of where in
| the country you are, and also locale-specific subcultures
| (e.g. west coast vs east coast vs deep south).
|
| Like the whole point of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was that
| Will Smith and his uncle's family had very different
| subcultural contexts (although their divide was less
| "Nigeria vs Jamaica" and more a class divide), but also
| shared the broader experience of being black in America.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > based on someone's skin colour you are determining
| their culture/heritage. What does a Nigerian have in
| common with a Jamaican, apart from the melatonin in their
| skin?
|
| Based on their skin color, they are treated the same way
| by much of society. They are often compelled, for safety
| and for just day-to-day peace from racism, to live in the
| same neighborhoods, go to the same schools, eat at the
| same restaurants, visit the same websites (where they
| don't have to read racist comments), play the same online
| games (ditto), etc. - heck, you can't even watch porn
| without encountering endless racist portrayals based on
| skin color. So people with 'black' skin have many common
| experiences.
|
| Also, market segments don't have to be perfectly defined.
| We can always find flaws - no two people are alike; no
| one person is exactly alike from one day to the next.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| In the US, the vast majority of black people have
| descended from the enslaved Americans who have been in
| the US for hundreds of years. When people say "black
| culture" that's what they are referring to. Not that
| recent immigrants from Jamaica and Nigeria are from the
| same culture.
|
| There's the further concept that due to systemic racism,
| Jamaican and Nigerian culture will blend into the larger
| black culture than the larger US culture. And the
| Nigerian and the Jamaican will experience a similar
| American experience, very different from what an Irish or
| German white person would.
| namdnay wrote:
| Ok I think I get it. Maybe more "African American" than
| "Black"
| [deleted]
| snakeboy wrote:
| If they're a few generations removed from their Nigerian
| or Jamaican ancestors, they probably don't have strong
| ties to their home countries' cultures. This seems true
| of most Americans whose families emigrated 3+ generations
| ago.
|
| "The melatonin in their skin" explicitly shaped many
| aspects of law, society, and culture in the US up until
| the 60s, which is still in living memory, so I don't
| think it's that surprising that there would still be
| measurable differences in culture and media interests.
|
| Think about how much your parents' lives and the stories
| they told you are reflected in your present-day values
| and interests.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > "The melatonin in their skin" explicitly shaped many
| aspects of law, society, and culture in the US up until
| the 60s
|
| I see it regularly today, as African-Americans and many
| other people commonly say. We can recall that overt
| racism is practiced in certain political groups which
| have expanded in popularity. Research shows that racist
| attacks have greatly increased over the last few years.
| Regarding the law, many of the laws that existed before
| the Voting Rights Act have been recently reinstated since
| the Supreme Court invalidated key parts of the Act and
| banned federal courts from addressing many state voting
| issues.
|
| It's also not rare anymore in my personal experience, as
| it was before 2016. In the last month a white person told
| me that people with black skin were 'biologically
| different', which accounted for economic inequality. Over
| the weekend another told me, highly ironically, that
| 'minorities' were more prone to disinformation than white
| people, and that was the cause of problem of
| disinformation on the Internet. (For the record, I
| disagreed with both as effectively as I could - you can't
| tacitly approve.)
|
| A significant cause of discrimination is that its impact
| and presence is overlooked by people who aren't affected
| by it. Racism doesn't affect me (directly), so it's not
| hard to say it's minimal.
| snakeboy wrote:
| I wasn't trying to imply racism ended in the 60s, to be
| clear!
|
| I intentionally avoided discussing modern politics in
| order to make a stronger (albeit more limited) argument,
| by emphasizing explicit legal discrimination. Even if
| someone doesn't believe in systemic racism, it's not a
| point of debate that black people alive today were
| explicitly persecuted under the law based on the color of
| their skin.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Ah, that makes more sense.
|
| I understand what you are doing now and that used to be
| my approach. Now, I feel that it just allows the
| denialist rhetoric to perpetuate. I'm not even going to
| call it a myth because it's such obvious nonsense, I
| believe even to the people that say it - it's just push-
| back, a tactic.
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| > What does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican,
| apart from the melatonin in their skin? Why would they
| have similar tastes in media?
|
| They don't necessarily. Not speaking for the BlackOakTV
| folks here but I don't think this is trying to target
| _all_ black people. The US is somewhat unique in having a
| large population that was ripped from their respective
| home countries and forced to create their own shared
| culture under the thumb of slavery. Someone that
| immigrated from Nigeria in the last decade doesn 't have
| that same experience.
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| > The US is somewhat unique in having a large population
| that was ripped from their respective home countries and
| forced to create their own shared culture under the thumb
| of slavery.
|
| Unique?
|
| "Between 1502 and 1866, of the 11.2 million Africans
| taken, only 388,000 arrived in North America, while the
| rest went to Brazil, the European colonies in the
| Caribbean and Spanish territories in Central and South
| America, in that order"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Latin_America
| anthk wrote:
| Ths.In Cuba, for example, most people form a Cuban
| culture for all races.
| [deleted]
| zwieback wrote:
| You might want to parse out my sentence again. There's tons
| of racism perpetuated by businesses but I don't think this
| is one of them
| tomp wrote:
| Actually the courts think that a similar business, "cakes for
| straight people", is in fact discriminatory and also illegal.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Actually the courts think that a similar business, "cakes
| for straight people", is in fact discriminatory and also
| illegal.
|
| Remind me again which side won _Masterpiece Cakeshop_ at
| the Supreme Court.
|
| Also, there is a huge difference between _denying service_
| on a particular basis and _designing a service to appeal to
| a particular community while leaving it open to all_.
| mod wrote:
| Interestingly your (mis) phrasing makes what is probably
| the distinctive difference.
|
| It was actually "cakes for anyone except gay people."
|
| It's the exclusion that gets you in hot water, not the
| targeting.
| imbnwa wrote:
| LMAO, you're really reaching for those grapes. The courts
| ruled that "cakes for straight people" meant _cannot be
| sold to non-straight people_ , which is in fact
| discriminatory and also illegal. I don't think BlackOakTV
| is requiring photo identification as proof of Blackness to
| sign-up. Stop it.
|
| Edit: For clarity, the Supreme Court actually ruled in
| favor of the homophobic cake shop in Colorado strictly on
| freedom of religion grounds, however religion is clearly
| not the factor here. And for your argument to be effective,
| you'd have to agree that a homophobic cake shop can't get
| away with discrimination _simpliciter_.
| runbathtime wrote:
| You can only discriminate against white people. You can't
| discriminate against all of the political elite's pets.
| Pets include blacks, browns, gays, trans, and all the
| victim groups. Also businesses usually can't discriminate
| either.
|
| I get that this tag line is more for marketing purposes,
| and in fact they might not refuse to take white ppl's
| money that want to sign up... but they are in fact
| discriminating in the type of content they will produce
| and stream-- but since its against whites it is okay.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > You can only discriminate against white people. You
| can't discriminate against all of the political elite's
| pets. Pets include blacks, browns, gays, trans, and all
| the victim groups.
|
| Wow. Pets, okay.
|
| > I get that this tag line is more for marketing
| purposes, and in fact they might not refuse to take white
| ppl's money that want to sign up... but they are in fact
| discriminating in the type of content they will produce
| and stream-- but since its against whites it is okay.
|
| Lemme ask you a question: are the American arms of
| Univision/Telemundo/Korean Broadcasting System also
| discriminatory since they also will likely not put up
| content by ethnicities other than their own, which would
| also be "against whites"? Cause they actually have FCC
| approval.
| firekvz wrote:
| Pretty sure none of those networks are advertising
| themselves as 'something for -some race', they just
| exist, do business and focus a sector of the US
| population, never mention anything else
|
| You can target a niche, thats fine, but doing this type
| of headlines, you just end up segregating yourself.
| crooked-v wrote:
| BET has been around since 1980.
| dlp211 wrote:
| SCOTUS didn't rule in favor of Masterpiece on freedom of
| religion grounds, they ruled that the Colorado commission
| didn't exercise religious neutrality. It was an extremely
| narrow ruling and essentially kicked the problem back to
| Colorado to fix their commission. This is an important
| distinction as it results in vastly different outcomes.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Not that this discussion is pivotal to my point but the
| court wrote that:
|
| >"[T]he Commission's treatment of Phillips' case violated
| the State's duty under the First Amendment not to base
| laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or
| religious viewpoint."[0]
|
| Not only is that utterly unclear, it doesn't even make a
| distinction between "they said something that offended
| Phillips' religion" and "you can't make/apply laws that
| are hostile to Phillips' religious viewpoint". I don't
| think there's a queer person in America that would
| perceive "vastly different outcomes" from a ruling like
| that.
|
| [0]https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/h
| uman_r...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The headline does not say "black creators", though. Which is
| regrettable in a way; it's throwing away the biggest and most
| interesting differentiator about what they're actually trying
| to do, and replacing it with a source of gratuitous
| controversy. "Black creators don't get a fair chance for
| success in media and entertainment, and we can help address
| this" is a great insight, the stuff a YC launch can be made of;
| "Black people should consume different content that's only
| marketed to them", not so much and will obviously create
| controversy.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| I get your point. We're here for black creators too, but our
| customers are black viewers, so we'll always put them first.
| But of course, there is no demand without supply, and black
| creators are at the heart of what we do, too. Fortunately, we
| can serve both entities!
| rapind wrote:
| > ... and make you think about the ways in which Netflix does
| not serve black people.
|
| Or also just get you to talk about it, because _controversial_.
| bishoprook2 wrote:
| >This is a streaming service set up to elevate content by black
| creators, to make up for the fact that the mainstream media
| under-represents those people. I'm struggling to see the
| outrage on a cultural level and on a startup level I can
| absolutely imagine there is a market for this.
|
| If you find any niche that makes sense, go for it. There's a
| reason for MotorTrend to shift into cable and on-demand,
| Disney, etc. The market can get slice 'n diced in a million
| ways from the Left Handed Channel to TrannyTV (for transmission
| specialists naturally).
|
| >make you think about the ways in which Netflix does not serve
| black people.
|
| Heck, it (Netflix) doesn't serve _me_ , and I ain't black. It's
| a pity that they can't run out and buy rights to a jillion
| older movies, but I guess everyone is still loathe to license
| them (or too expensive).
| acituan wrote:
| > If you find any niche that makes sense, go for it
|
| Even if it meant _objectifying_ people into a market segment
| just to make money, under the branding of empathy and
| identity?
|
| Just because it is branded "black" doesn't mean it won't
| perpetuate harmful racial stereotypes, such as "being black
| is the most important thing about you as a person". In fact,
| it would have every reason to amplify that message to keep
| and grow their "segment", regardless of its psycho-social
| consequences.
| bishoprook2 wrote:
| >Even if it meant objectifying people into a market segment
| just to make money, under the branding of empathy and
| identity?
|
| Not to be rude, but what do you think a 'market segment'
| is? What is there besides market segments? For that matter,
| what is there besides money? at least in terms of the
| entertainment biz.
| acituan wrote:
| > Not to be rude
|
| On the contrary, you're making my point.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I feel it's necessary to identify myself as black to
| provide some context...
|
| The objectification already exists. This won't change that.
| It will, however, hopefully result in more content existing
| for a market that's hungry for it.
|
| OP also identifies as black, so I trust that they
| understand that branding their product as "for blacks only"
| will only hurt them, _even within their market segment_.
| [deleted]
| dhosek wrote:
| My favorite part of it is that insofar as the objectors
| identify themselves, they're (of course) white. From the OPs
| description, although they don't say so explicitly, it's clear
| that they're Black. Long history1 in this country of white
| folks telling Black folks what's appropriate for Black folks to
| say or do.
|
| 1. And let's not fool ourselves thinking that because I've used
| the word "history" that it's not still very much the case.
| kbenson wrote:
| I'm not sure you can get much more "middlebrow dismissive"
| than assuming that people objecting are white and the people
| they are objecting to are black and therefore it must be for
| similar reasons to why white people objected to black people
| in the past for bad reasons, so you can just ignore them.
|
| Importantly, even if you're right in a lot of the instances,
| it doesn't actually move the discussion forward in a useful
| way because it paints with too broad a brush and encourages
| others to do the same.
| whalesalad wrote:
| > I can't help but feel like everyone commenting here read the
| headline, brushed straight past the lengthy explanation and
| went directly to outrage in the comment box.
|
| This is most comments on HN.
| gdulli wrote:
| Some people look for any excuse to be outraged. But I think
| people are more curious than outraged. I don't have any opinion
| about the existence this company but it did make me think. For
| example:
|
| > When I grew up in the 90s, it seemed like black people had a
| relatively high number of TV shows to choose from like
| "Martin", "Living Single," and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air".
| It felt good. I felt represented. Unfortunately, it turns out
| the 90s were an aberration
|
| I also grew up watching shows like these, and being a white
| person watching a black family didn't feel strange or
| incongruous at all.
|
| Something I've already wondered is, what if that aspect of the
| 90s wasn't an aberration, but a feature from a time when there
| were fewer channels and diversity was concentrated in the fewer
| places everyone watched, due to how content was structured?
|
| And is it unfortunate that relegating "black" content to its
| own service gives it a "niche" status that it doesn't deserve?
| Am I missing out on good content because signing up for any new
| streaming service is a high bar and something I don't do?
|
| Will the bigger streaming services drop the content offered by
| this one, so that the largest audiences lose the opportunity to
| see this content?
|
| Was having fewer channels actually in a way anti-monoculture?
| gunshai wrote:
| >I also grew up watching shows like these, and being a white
| person watching a black family didn't feel strange or
| incongruous at all.
|
| What was weird for me was as I got older, all of these shows
| became just samey Horsein Around type crap on top of that I
| do remember at a certain point noticing a stark difference
| between shows that were on UPN, WB, BET ect and ones that
| were on say like FX, Fox, ABC NBC I'd say starting around the
| early 00s.
|
| This difference became so stark, but when I was younger there
| seemed to be far less of a difference. Almost like we started
| off with the here are ethnic families, they are similar to
| you but slightly different. Then ended up with, here is this
| completely different culture that you don't understand so it
| no longer is going to appeal to you. You being me and me
| being clearly at the end not the target demographic.
|
| In retrospect maybe the beginning was a fantasy that was
| never really true. My point is overall, I think I'm pretty
| burnt out on content that is meant to be hyper focused on
| identity. I hope more people get burnt out on it and realize
| that centering your life around aspects that you have no
| agency over is a waste of time.
| neartheplain wrote:
| >I do remember at a certain point noticing a stark
| difference between shows that were on UPN, WB, BET ect and
| ones that were on say like FX, Fox, ABC NBC I'd say
| starting around the early 00s.
|
| I remember this fork in the road quite clearly. First
| noticed it when I saw ads for "The Parkers" on UPN during
| ad breaks for "Star Trek: Voyager." Prior to that point I'd
| watch hours upon hours of Cosby Show, Fresh Prince, Sanford
| and Son, etc. without the slightest feeling of otherness. I
| am also white.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Would someone explain what changed for the rest of us?
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| My netflix feed at least has been pretty full of shows and movies
| that feature black stories and characters. I think they have a
| specific channel for this. So have the other streaming networks
| from what I've seen.
|
| My apple News+ has had a black experience and racial justice
| spotlight - you can't turn some of these off actually.
| ssully wrote:
| Most streaming services have "horror" sections as well, but I
| would say the majority of them are pretty lacking in comparison
| to a service like Shudder, which focuses specifically on
| horror. I could imagine a lot of the black specific sections on
| services being lacking in the same way.
| blackgirldev wrote:
| People working for a mainstream service like Netflix are
| wrapped in maintaining their job and catering to white people.
| Having a separate streaming service with curators from the
| Black community means more opportunity to express unpopular
| ideas. This means less Harriet Tubman bios and more current
| culture/expression.
|
| edit: I should add that having watched a few shows like Jack &
| Jill (which I had never heard of until now)...I am reminded
| that when you have white people choose the Black
| actors/actresses of a show (even if they have Black employees'
| advice) limits the range of beauty. I forget how many gorgeous
| people are overlooked because they don't fit the mainstream
| idea of what "we" are supposed to look like in order to be seen
| as attractive. It's a subtle thing that permeates our children
| and culture and really makes a difference in perspective.
|
| Also, the portrayal of middle and upper class Blacks is soooooo
| limited. I am so tired of hearing about up-and-coming poor
| Blacks. What about privileged assholes like me who always had a
| great life with plenty of opportunities? We are out here and we
| have stories.
| risky_opinions wrote:
| I'm White. I'm not racist. I agree with your opinions of
| wanting more black stories.
|
| The fact so many people are capitalizing black and lower
| casing White is such a deliberate act of divisiveness.
|
| Stop doing this. You're turning moderate people into enemies.
|
| Everything is being turned into race and division to the
| point it's making my Asian partner and a lot of her friends
| in the Asian community mad at the black community.
|
| Can't we all just get over the tiny number of genes that
| separate us?
|
| I mean this in love and honesty. And I'm sorry I didn't
| capitalize Black. Let's capitalize it all.
| tptacek wrote:
| You capitalize "Black" for the same reason you capitalize
| "Spanish" or "Polish". It's a distinctive ethnicity and
| culture; it isn't simply a broad description of people
| sharing a skin color. You can read John McWhorter --- no
| friend to wokeism --- talking about how much better
| capital-B Black is as a description than any of the other
| weird terms we've come up with in the last 20 years.
|
| Nobody anywhere on this thread is freaking out when people
| fail to capitalize "black". The people who do capitalize it
| are simply making it unambiguous that they are referring to
| American Black culture.
| whoaisme wrote:
| LOL what a load of nonsense. Spanish and Polish are
| capped because Spain and Poland are capped. This woke
| garbage is so obsessed with remaking reality in the face
| of the self evident it's no wonder why no one takes it
| seriously.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Thanks for your thoughts here! I'm definitely on the same
| page with you! Don't love labeling ourselves this way, but by
| having the "gatekeepers" of what goes on BlackOakTV look like
| the viewers we're targeting, it opens the door for a very
| differentiated content and platform experience.
| blackgirldev wrote:
| I am wishing you all the best and just bought a
| subscription. If you need software developers I can help.
|
| I am telling everyone I know about it as well. Getting the
| word out and early support is key!
| jxramos wrote:
| yah I second that sentiment, that range of beauty palette
| on the launch page really struck me with its "novelty" if
| you will. A smorgasbord of eye candy with great variance
| we never get served with. I love it.
| thesausageking wrote:
| Those channels existing doesn't mean there isn't a market need.
| The grocery store I go to has a big international foods section
| and I still shop at the Indian market because they have a much
| better selection.
| city41 wrote:
| > I think they have a specific channel for this
|
| Here is Netflix's Black Stories page:
| https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81305957
| spicymaki wrote:
| What is missing here is creative ownership. That content needs
| to be vetted by tastemakers and producers who are mostly white.
| What gets funded and not funded is sometimes determined by the
| target demographic and in America that is usually the white
| majority.
|
| Netflix and Apple gets to turn on, off, buy, sell, and change
| this content on a whim. They get to select what is important
| about black culture. Today the black experience might matter to
| the audience, tomorrow who knows?
|
| Ownership is the only thing that matters in America and for
| black creators to get there content out there they will need to
| own the means of production.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Fair enough - I think you could lead with that. The claims
| that shows don't have black characters - not sure that is
| true in current release wave.
|
| WorldStar / BET etc - have been some channels / platforms
| focused more heavily on the black experience?
| the_other wrote:
| I don't understand why you got downvoted. This seems like a
| highly relevant issue (and one which, as a white guy, I
| typically forget about; thanks for reminding me).
| disneygibson wrote:
| This just makes me sad. We seem to be returning to a segregated
| society with separate services for every ethnic group. It's not
| the "melting pot" idea of America that I was raised with, where
| everyone contributes their own unique culture to a unified
| American whole. That was the brilliance of American identity,
| which is now fracturing at an accelerated rate.
| itisit wrote:
| Separate but equal
| recroad wrote:
| It was never a melting point. It was always a mixed salad.
| disneygibson wrote:
| The concept of "white" is a consequence of the melting pot
| idea. I had hoped that eventually we could expand from
| White/European American to just American, a broad identity
| not based on race at all. This would have solved the
| injustices of the past and built a more cohesive American
| identity.
|
| Instead we seem to be going backwards. 2050 New York City
| might look more like 1900 than 2000.
| imbnwa wrote:
| FYI in 1900 it was illegal for Black folk to occupy the
| same commercial spaces as European Americans, and were
| relegated to designated areas in many public spaces, and
| that wasn't because Black folk wanted to, or imposed that
| law.
|
| Your "melting pot" interpretation concretely just means
| "they should not be different or receive different things
| than me".
| disneygibson wrote:
| _Your "melting pot" interpretation concretely just means
| "they should not be different or receive different things
| than me"_
|
| No, it doesn't, and that makes no sense. The melting pot
| idea means that everyone works toward a cohesive national
| identity and recognizes contributions from everyone. It
| doesn't mean that every group should be separate and
| excluded from each other.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Separate and excluded? Bruh, they're not requiring photo
| identification on sign-up as proof of Blackness, LMAO,
| lotta people in this thread are reaching for them grapes.
| I hope you sign-up, maybe you'll like some of the
| content.
|
| Lemme ask you another question since we're asking silly
| questions: should Telemundo and Univision be illegal to
| broadcast in the US because its not in English (cohesive
| national identity, right?)? Cause that's what you sound
| like.
| disneygibson wrote:
| Who said anything about it being illegal?
|
| You are being sarcastic and not engaging in good faith.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > Who said anything about it being illegal?
|
| Sure, lets deescalate: are their broadcasting in America
| and commensurate content choices discriminatory or
| working against a cohesive national identity?
|
| > You are being sarcastic and not engaging in good faith.
|
| But I find the last bit ironic
| disneygibson wrote:
| This is HN, not Reddit. Snarky one liners aren't welcome
| here.
|
| In response to your question, yes I would hope that as
| Latinos continue to become a larger portion of the
| population, they join the overall "American" culture and
| influence it. Not remain as a separate group with a
| separate language and separate media.
|
| If you look at the statistics, this already happens.
| Second and third generation Latinos identify more as
| American than as Latino.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| The concept of "white" is not a consequence of the melting
| pot idea. The concept of "white" was explicitly born as a
| way to justify enslaving and treating a group of people as
| property for generations.
|
| If one wants to solve the injustices of the past, its
| important to actually acknowledge the reality of those
| injustices and how they feed into modern day. The "melting
| pot" theory I suspect was always a form of injustice in of
| itself, because it expected people to simply forget what
| happened to them and accept that they'll never get an
| apology have amends made for them.
| disneygibson wrote:
| Most "white" people in America today were not considered
| so 100-150 years ago. Irish, Slavs, Eastern Europeans,
| Italians, Jews, Levantine Arabs, and pretty much everyone
| other than English, Germans and French.
|
| My point is that this identity was expanded to be
| inclusive in order to build social cohesion. That was a
| good thing, but now let's rename it to just "American"
| and include all ethnic groups, instead of going
| backwards.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Most "white" people in America today were never treated
| like property the way black people have been in america
| for generations. Most "white" people in America have
| never dealt with the degree of dehumanization that
| occurred to black people in America. The degree of what
| has happened to black people in America is overwhelmingly
| moreso than any other race save for Native Americans.
|
| It's extremely important to acknowledge that the barriers
| to social cohesion for certain races are significantly
| higher than others. We are in living memory where black
| children had to be accompanied by the military for their
| protection because they dared attend the same school as
| white people.
| disneygibson wrote:
| I didn't say it would be as easy for everyone. Just that
| this is a better route (melting pot) than a return to
| separatism.
|
| I'm struggling to see how your comment relates to what
| I'm saying.
| yaacov wrote:
| The word 'white' means a lot of different things. Those
| groups may not have been considered white socially but
| they were always legally white for the purposes of
| immigration, not being enslaved, not being subjected to
| Jim Crow.
| disneygibson wrote:
| _As a result, populations poorly represented in 1890 were
| prevented from immigrating in proportionate numbers--
| especially affecting Italians, Greeks and Eastern
| European Jews, as well as Poles and other Slavs.[1][3][4]
| According to the US Department of State 's Office of the
| Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the
| ideal of U.S. homogeneity."_
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
|
| Of course they didn't have it as bad as black Americans,
| but that isn't the topic of this discussion.
| plehoux wrote:
| French-Canadian were too considered like most other
| catholics as different and undesirable :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_in_Maine
| disneygibson wrote:
| Yep, White used to be more or less synonymous with WASP.
| White Anglo Saxon Protestant.
| quantum_solanum wrote:
| > "[white] identity was expanded to be inclusive in order
| to build social cohesion. That was a good thing.."
|
| Social cohesion largely as a means of sharpening anti-
| Blackness and of labor control, particularly during and
| after the defeat of Reconstruction and due to growing
| relevance of the industrial organized labor movement. Du
| Bois did an immense amount of work critiquing pretty much
| exactly this.
| disneygibson wrote:
| The entire history of cultures becoming Americanized was
| not purely an anti-black project. The history of Jews in
| America is a good example and they were subject to Ivy
| League quotas well after WW2.
| PepeLa wrote:
| > It's not the "melting pot" idea of America that I was raised
| with
|
| I remember that song from Schoolhouse Rock too. But if as an
| adult you sincerely believe the US has actually been a "melting
| pot" at any point in history, you are deeply misinformed. What
| about Native American genocide, slavery, the Chinese Exclusion
| Act, Jim Crow, internment of Japanese-Americans, redlining, or
| mass incarceration sounds like a "melting pot" to you?
| rchaud wrote:
| Can you provide a definition for the 'melting pot' idea that
| you were raised with?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The first paragraph defines it well:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting_pot
| rchaud wrote:
| Thanks for the link. It seems like the melting pot idea is
| old enough that it's defined in the same narrow way that
| "all men are created equal" was in the Constitution.
|
| American multiculturalism up until WW2 was English,
| Scottish, Irish, French, Italian, Jewish and Greek.
| Strictly European, yet still featured plenty of
| discrimination within those tiers. The discrimination
| didn't end because people magically became more
| enlightened, it ended (or at least was greatly reduced)
| when the marginalized groups assimilated into a more
| homogenous "American" identity, which defaults to 'white'.
|
| It's not clear where non-Europeans fall into this melting
| pot concept, because most are not racially ambiguous and
| cannot claim to be white. Most scripts will not have a
| protagonist of a specific race. But in casting, it will
| simply be assumed that the character in question is white.
| Because melting pot or not, that's what everybody's default
| is.
| spicymaki wrote:
| To be honest America is still pretty segregated and always has
| been.
|
| Neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, literature, theaters, and
| religious institutions are segregated. Black people are still
| being harassed or worse for being in the "wrong place" at the
| wrong time. I assure you whatever racist events you hear in the
| media is just the tip of the iceberg.
|
| I grew up in one of the most racially and culturally diverse
| places in the US "a true melting pot" and the neighborhoods
| were still segregated by race and ethnicity.
|
| The cultural contributions you are talking about are mostly
| selections made by white tastemakers who vet who and what is
| fashionable for the time. Sometimes to improve marketability
| they will replace minorities to make the material palatable.
|
| The only thing that matters in America is equity (ownership not
| fairness). In order for black people to have equity they need
| to own it.
| raclage wrote:
| > It's not the "melting pot" idea of America that I was raised
| with, where everyone contributes their own unique culture to a
| unified American whole.
|
| Then I don't understand why your response to someone trying to
| create a platform to express their culture strikes you as
| "Fracturing."
| namdnay wrote:
| Having a separate platform per "culture" (although what
| culture is "black"? That's a skin colour) definitely sounds
| like a fracture to me
| disneygibson wrote:
| Because it's encouraging separatism. I would much rather have
| a startup that promotes black creators to the broader culture
| than one exclusionary by design.
|
| Looking at top musicians, artists, and other cultural
| figures, it seems to me like this is already largely the
| case. Hip hop sales come in large part from white people. I
| want more of this cultural sharing, not isolationism.
| raclage wrote:
| I didn't really see anything in the design I saw as
| exclusionary!
|
| > because we appreciate the HN community taking time to
| hear our story, for a short period of time, we're making
| some of our original black TV shows available for free on
| our site
|
| Like thousands of business before them they're marketing to
| an audience but it seems like they're more than happy to
| build a broader audience.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| It's not cultural sharing now, it's _appropriation_. See
| also the endless monologues about dreadlocks.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Remember that twitter isn't real life. For every college
| freshmen tweeting about the sushi counter being cultural
| appropriation, 98% of people disagree.
|
| Just because someone is loud and inflammatory does not
| mean their views are widely held.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Unfortunately, it isn't confined to Twitter. Now a family
| friend is giving her kid crap over wanting dreads.
| RuleOfBirds wrote:
| While I agree with "not wanting separatism," I find it
| infuriating that the burden of analyzing and debating
| "separatism" (or etc) always gets foisted on the minority
| or marginalized populations create a space for themselves.
| And relatively never the mainstream, dominant culture and
| institutions that have left out, pushed out, or outright
| exploited them in the first place.
| shipmaster wrote:
| You seem to think there is a monolithic "culture" that
| needs to be augmented. This has never been the case. There
| are always a dominant culture that is not necessarily named
| and multiple subcultures per minority group. Why are folks
| more sensitive to black sub-culture manifestations in the
| US vs other minority groups?
| [deleted]
| disneygibson wrote:
| America does have a relatively monolithic culture and
| this translates into its businesses, government, and
| everything else. This is easy to observe if you live
| outside of America.
| raclage wrote:
| Are you being serious when you say America has a
| relatively monolithic culture? Relative to whom?
| disneygibson wrote:
| Yes, by and large Americans have the same basic values
| and interests. The most popular entertainment figures,
| sports, musicians, and other cultural elements come from
| a very wide range of backgrounds. Values like individual
| freedom or the importance of voting are fairly universal
| among Americans.
|
| As I said, this is easy to observe from abroad, where
| there is no space to differentiate between black
| Americans and white Americans. They're all just Americans
| and they mostly act the same way.
| endisneigh wrote:
| The lie you've been fed is that America was ever integrated.
| disneygibson wrote:
| The melting pot is a goal and a living idea, not an idealized
| time in the past.
|
| And yes, groups of white Americans that were hostile to each
| other a century ago are now so integrated that it's not even
| thought about. An Italian Catholic marrying a German
| Protestant was a huge deal in 1900. Today it is nothing.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Your example of European immigrants is noted but isn't
| really relevant to the racial tensions between Blacks and
| Whites.
| jxramos wrote:
| interesting, so by analogy just as as those disparate
| groups got subsumed into a larger one in some rough
| identity integration thing so too we would hope to further
| widen that group to join with other groups to subsume
| everything under the sun where group divisions are no
| longer even perceived. The whole "just one race" sort of
| thing I'm imagining.
| disneygibson wrote:
| I think that is probably the best outcome for the US, if
| it wants to remain as a unified state for a long time. If
| not, then separatism eventually leads to a divorce. It's
| happened before in world history, it can certainly happen
| again.
| yaacov wrote:
| Black people mostly aren't immigrants and it's not fair to
| demand that they assimilate if they don't want to. America
| forcibly enslaved black people for hundreds of years, then
| excluded them from our society and political process for a few
| generations, it's not surprising that they developed their own
| culture.
| disneygibson wrote:
| Assimilation implies giving up your culture for a new one.
| That isn't the melting pot idea, which is about giving and
| taking.
|
| Otherwise I don't really get the solution. Don't try to
| integrate different cultures, thereby continuing to exclude
| them?
| [deleted]
| okr wrote:
| Competition is good. Good luck!
| sobrave1098 wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of other cultures and think they need to be
| celebrated because they make all of our lives richer..but I wish
| there would be less animosity towards white people.
|
| 'White culture' creates all of the countries that people from
| every other country are fleeing to, or trying to immigrate to.
|
| White people created Democracy, Checks and Balances, overwhelming
| amount of the technology that makes our lives great, much of the
| major medical breakthroughs...and so much more.
|
| White culture, of science and planning and Democracy, is GREAT.
|
| Let's remember to celebrate it as well.
| ntma wrote:
| The only "people" who hate on actual white people are j _ws.
|
| Remember kids -- j_ws _AREN 'T_ white!
| arcturus17 wrote:
| How is any of that "white culture" though?
|
| Granted it's been predominantly made of white people but there
| was never any explicit awareness of race like there is in black
| culture, as far as I can tell...
|
| Western culture (a term which would be more familiar to me at
| least) is in fact heavily predicated on judeo-christian values
| hailing from the Middle East, where people were not really
| white... Similarly in the Classical World there was a lot of
| mingling between races.
|
| I'm European and I despise identity politics but the whole idea
| of "white culture" is just weird to me. I think of it as a
| race-agnostic "western culture", and I don't think it's at odds
| with "black culture", or that the existence of "black culture"
| logically means there exists a "white culture" - other than
| maybe at the fringes.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Do you thinks Greeks and Romans thought that way? Were Germans
| and Celts 'white' to them?
| joemazerino wrote:
| What a bizarre culture we live in. Pushing back to segregation
| rather than away from it.
| brudgers wrote:
| The screenshots on the "Free episode" page give me the immediate
| impression the shows are low budget productions. It's a
| combination of the locations/backgrounds, lighting, and the
| randomness of some of the frames...the out of focus hand in the
| first image.
|
| For marketing, it might help to color grade the stills on the
| page similarly. The natural balance of the first still makes the
| green and magenta casts in others more obvious.
|
| Good luck.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's an interesting time to be doing something like this,
| because Youtube and TikTok have created a permission structure
| for idiosyncratically "indie" content to break through to mass
| audiences. When Youtube launched (I am old) I thought it was
| pretty silly, like "America's Funniest Home Videos" but without
| Bob Saget. But if you told me today that far more content is
| consumed on Youtube than on all the cable networks combined,
| I'd believe you.
|
| The extent to which these things appear to people outside their
| audience as "low budget" might not matter, and if it doesn't,
| that seems like a big new thing, an idea you can play around
| with.
| brudgers wrote:
| My critique is on the terms of the project as presented here.
| I didn't choose a random link. I clicked on one that was
| presented.
|
| The page aggregates visuals. Its design amplifies the visual
| effects of low budget.
|
| Even straight to video movies get boxcover art.
|
| But your comment prompted me to look at my Youtube app.
| There's a lot of effort in the home page river to create
| visual coherence to solve the same problem.
|
| Some of it appears to be color grading. Some appears to be
| sequencing similar palettes adjacent. Some is breaking up
| palette transitions with ads using colors that help.
|
| A big part of it is using a title screen with text over the
| image...after looking at the desktop browser page.
|
| An avant garde art project can seek to create a new form of
| visual literacy. That's not what this is. There are visual
| conventions paving the happy paths.
|
| People might watch a drama with purple lighting without
| caring. But if you ask them if they want to watch a drama
| with purple lighting, they will think it a strange question.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| It seems like most of it is going to be indie content so...
| they are low budget. I suspect it will be hard to win with this
| approach. I'm not convinced mainstream black audiences value
| black-centric content more than they value production quality.
| wildcoding wrote:
| This is so racist I finally created account on HN just to tell
| you how racist that is. Idea is outrageous, are you testing the
| overtone window once again? Not enough afroamerican content on
| Netflix? Black Queen Charlotte is not enough?
|
| Stop racism at the roots. You do not deserve to be popular. I'm
| ashamed this even got to main HN page.
| masterof0 wrote:
| I don't think having a Netflix alternative for black folks is
| racist. I think the need for it, is just sad, the fact that
| black people feel the need to have their own platform, says a
| lot about their representation(or misrepresentation) on
| mainstream media and other places in society. The need for some
| people (... you know which...) to label us by race, country of
| origin, etc... is disgusting. And, to be honest, I'm used to it
| at this point. I'm happy for BlackOakTV, and wish them great
| success.
| Giorgi wrote:
| Good lord this is so racist. Imagine if there were "Netflix for
| whites"
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If you were running BlackOakTV, how would you solve the under-
| representation problem?
| jackryan946 wrote:
| I caught my cheating partner thanks to this hacker that helped me
| track and hacked all social media accounts of my partner, without
| my partner knowing. You can contact him at:
| alvaroperea946@gmail.com He did excellent job for me.
| cpach wrote:
| Best of luck with your endeavour!
| emodendroket wrote:
| I'm not in the target market for this product, but the hostile
| reaction it's engendered would kind of seem to be its own
| advertisement for its utility.
| n0t3ths81 wrote:
| I will never understand why in the USA the amount of melanin in
| your skin is so important. I will never understand how they plan
| to fight (and potentially finish) racism by creating more
| division.
| rchaud wrote:
| This is a good idea; I had the same one, it seems like an
| underserved market. I too miss the era of '80s and '90s black
| American sitcoms.
|
| I think some recognizable shows will be needed for this to take
| off though. "Original Content" is a hard sell; that's why Netflix
| started with a AAA show like "House of Cards" to establish
| credibility. It's only after that they started diluting the
| Netflix Originals brand by buying up every half baked show out
| there.
|
| Here are some I thought of:
|
| - Roc (rare sitcom where laugh track comedy is mixed with heavy
| drama)
|
| - Everybody Hates Chris
|
| - Martin
|
| - Girlfriends (CW)
|
| - My Wife & Kids
| rvz wrote:
| Is this inclusive?
|
| What's wrong with Nollywood? or Bollywood?
|
| They seem to be doing well and are already on Netflix.
| horrified wrote:
| I feel like I have read about a similar YC startup before. Search
| brings up afrostream.tv - how did they fare, and what is
| different? https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/afrostream
|
| Not that there can't be more than one.
|
| For non-blacks, what would be recommended shows to watch to get a
| feel for black culture (or your vision of black culture, I
| guess)?
|
| Edit: it seem Afrostream shut down in 2017
| https://techpoint.africa/2017/09/22/afrostream-shut-down/
| andkon wrote:
| As an indigenous guy getting into film and trying to get
| indigenous stories made, I really love this. Hope it comes
| together.
|
| Is the licensing you do for content that's already been made? I
| guess I was curious how the "original" stuff works for you, like
| if you produce it more directly or if it's more about buying the
| distribution rights.
|
| Also super curious how you feel you fit into the existing
| ecosystems - festivals, production companies, etc. Do you
| have/want connections in specific parts of the film and content
| world that would help?
| greatjack613 wrote:
| So offensive
| nablaone wrote:
| "And black creators often did not get the same chance at success
| that their mainstream counterparts did, leading to some black
| creators filing lawsuits against YouTube. Despite YouTube's good
| intentions, systemic biases in how non-black users treated black
| creators, as well as the economic realities of Black people only
| representing 10% of the U.S. audience, have led to YouTube never
| doing quite enough to address this."
|
| Could you tell more about it? Not American here.
| bluedino wrote:
| Non-black viewers are less likely to watch videos with black
| people in them.
| Perstone wrote:
| Is that because they are black though? Without asking those
| people why they watched something else you are just making
| the assumption it was to do with their skin colour and not
| anything to do with the content itself.
|
| e.g. I don't watch a lot of content with women on Youtube.
| Not because I have anything against women. It because the
| subjects I am interested in, isn't covered typically by
| women.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > Is that because they are black though?
|
| Bluntly, yes. A lot of people in the U.S. are implicitly or
| explicitly racist. You can see this in statistics, such as
| 'black-sounding' resumes consistently getting less
| callbacks than 'white-sounding' resumes [1].
|
| [1]: http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening
| %20MS%...
| emerged wrote:
| Which is made worse and worse by this type of tech which
| explicitly says such content is for black people.
| dcow wrote:
| Are you suggesting white people won't be interested in your
| content or that black people disproportionately subscribe to
| Netflix? Just curious. What if you inadvertently end up with a
| bunch of white subscribers? Would you continue to make mission
| driven decisions even if the best business route might be to
| diversify content?
|
| Do you have data supporting the assertion that black content
| languished after the 90s? I feel like I anecdotally agree with
| your experience but I'm also curious if the data reflects as
| much.
| ntma wrote:
| Wonder which certain long-nosed tribal "people" funded this
| one...
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| Strategically, are you trying to be a brand, a studio, a
| platform, an marketplace, or maybe all the above? I think the
| question I have is what to try to build first.
|
| As a brand, I see you trying to become a trusted provider of
| content for an underserved black-identifying audience with
| diverse tastes. To build brand first, I wonder if you don't want
| to put BlackOak-curated content out on existing media platforms.
| That could be #BlackOakRecommends on twitter.
|
| As a studio, and one competing with other producers, how will you
| differentiate yourselves to content creators? I guess that starts
| with the ability to get one's content in front of subscribers,
| but is there something beyond audience (which you are building),
| and money (which you are growing), that you can offer creators?
| Maybe that is access to and information about audience.
|
| As a platform, you are starting with UScreen.tv, and
| categorically the questions I have are how does your consumption
| experience road map and analytics & recommendations road map line
| up with theirs? How will you be able to deploy your own tech
| relative to theirs? Analytics might differentiate you. Netflix
| reportedly does not share much. How might you be able (through
| analytics) to inform creators about audience response through
| your platform? Can you use analytics uniquely to reinforce and
| maintain the trust of your audience - e.g., when the platform
| recommends a video or creator to a user, be able to answer the
| user's question "Why am I seeing this?"
|
| As a market place, you are an intermediary between content
| consumers and content creators. How do they to find each other
| and be rewarded from that - how users browse and how you
| recommend would be central. Maybe you license curator channels on
| your site. Perhaps that is in part potentially how you are able
| to connect creators directly to audiences, i.e. like hosted
| artist's pages. Perhaps the "BlackOak artist's page" is the place
| that consolidates an artist's identity, catalog and channels -
| twitter, instagram, twitch, etc - vs the artist's own page,
| youtube channel, weebly, etc. So, that's MySpace, of yore, on
| BlackOak.
|
| If there's a theme to all this, I would say it is how to make
| consumers, curators, and creators more visible in relation to a
| consumption experience. Ideas are cheap! good luck with
| everything.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Beautiful thoughts! Im taking note!
|
| To your point, we are trying to be all of things... and I would
| add community to that list.
|
| In terms of where we're starting, I'd say we've headed down the
| dual path of curator and studio. Five years ago, I think we
| could've been just a curator and come out earlier with a
| differentiated product. But today, with so many curated options
| out there, content differentiation was something we felt was
| key (and a part of our go to market).
|
| With those paths, we offer creators at a certain point in their
| journeys they don't get elsewhere: investment. And at the same
| time, our viewers get to be among the first to discover new
| talent.
|
| But like you said, we have lots to do to prove ourselves to
| many entities... so we know we have our work cut out for us!
| philip1209 wrote:
| For some supply chain inspiration - I recommend this podcast
| with Jeremy Cai from Italic.com:
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jeremy-cai-
| manufacture...
|
| It talks about how they could act like a software company by
| letting their suppliers take inventory risk. I feel like
| there could be a parallel here in BlackOakTV - perhaps by
| enabling independent studios to self-finance and have upside
| in the success of their content.
| ecmascript wrote:
| How is this not racist? I find this to be supporting segregation
| and racist ideas in general.
|
| I don't understand how this would lead towards a better society
| at all. I don't understand how YC gave you funding. I am starting
| to really lose respect for YC. Seems like a toxic idea and
| honestly I hope you fail.
| dang wrote:
| Whoa, criticizing YC is fine but "I hope you fail" is the sort
| of thing we ban accounts for. How nasty. Please stick to the
| site guidelines if you want to keep commenting here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| runbathtime wrote:
| Question to the mods- Would it be okay to make a Netflix for
| white people company and post it to hacker news?
|
| Question for the founders- At least since Feb 2021, Amazon and
| Netflix have created and promoted black voices by creating a
| separate category. Is the problem you attempt to solve more
| visibility and is what Amazon doing insufficient?
| Koshkin wrote:
| Well, the focus is (and, indeed, should be) on disadvantaged
| and under-represented minorities - at least until the playing
| field levels (which may take a while).
| janandonly wrote:
| I was not aware that black people where not allowed on Netflix.
| But I'm happy for them they can have their own Netflix now too...
| arua442 wrote:
| Wow, I'm not American so I suppose it's a cultural divide; to me
| this just sounds super racist.
|
| To each their own. Good luck!
| zsellera wrote:
| This project is a great showcase of what whitelabel streaming
| providers can do. Back when Youtube and Netflix started
| streaming, it was a huge deal technically (codecs,
| infrastructure, cdn). Now companies like uscreen offer this at a
| flat rate, and they themselves use 3rd-parties
| (Akamai/Cloudflare) for video storage and distribution.
| clownworldklown wrote:
| Streaming service specifically for niggers, man who wants to
| watch this monkey all fucking day, jesus crist KLOWN WORLD IS
| AMERICA, can't wait for your nigger collapse day and new civil
| war, kill niggers!
| Miner49er wrote:
| This seems like a great idea to me. Crunchyroll proved that niche
| streaming services can be successful, and there's already plenty
| of examples of companies that have succeeded like this for black
| people. BET, for example. Good luck!
| neartheplain wrote:
| Not all black Americans are fans of BET, or its effect on black
| society and culture:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZchP89w2pJo
| randompwd wrote:
| I'm more annoyed that this is yet another bunch of Americans
| showing their ignorance of the world by claiming Black to just
| represent African-Americans. So many different non American black
| people in the world but of course American imperialism shines
| right through regardless of color or culture to claim the word
| black and limit it just to Americans. That's not even to mention
| the divisiveness at all costs so at to get a buck.
|
| Any black American has less in common with any black person in
| Africa or Europe than they have with a white American.
|
| Honestly so sick of US issues always being portrayed as a
| simplistic black/white issue.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| Isn't this racist? How about Netflix for white people?
| nikkinana wrote:
| That's inherently racist. We're all one world. One vision.
| kadabra9 wrote:
| Just from an addressable market standpoint, it seems like you
| have work cut out for you given that you've essentially isolated
| your product to 13-14% or so of the US population. Not to mention
| those in that segment that already sub to Netflix , other
| streaming services etc.
| zentiggr wrote:
| I can't understand why so many commenters here consider this
| launch to be divisive, or as you say "isolated"...
|
| They're focusing on a particular cultural group to aggregate
| content and sponsor more... none of which excludes anyone else.
| Marketing niches are a core concept across the entire business
| world.
|
| What makes this one niche less effective?
| kadabra9 wrote:
| I never said it was divisive. All I said was from a practical
| standpoint the vast majority of their TAM is capped at
| capturing part of the 13.5% of the population.
|
| Can they build a good business doing that? If they can
| discover and secure great content, then I think so.
| bitminer wrote:
| Especially since Netflix has a lot of entertainment featuring
| black actors, producers etc. from the US. And a lot of Nigerian
| and South African productions too.
|
| You just have to look for it.
| [deleted]
| rchaud wrote:
| Not everything has to scale to Netflix levels to succeed or be
| sustainable. Targeting a smaller market means you also won't
| face Netflix' bandwidth costs.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| We certainly don't think this will be easy. That said, as you
| can probably imagine yourself, 13.5% of the U.S. population is
| a really big TAM on its own. That percentage of Netflix U.S.
| revenues would make us a very big company. That said, there is
| competition, and Netflix has black content too. So we will have
| to differentiate ourselves. As I mentioned in the post, product
| is one way to do that, and "super-serving" one audience can be
| a differentiator to when it comes to content, branding, and
| community. So yeah, we have our work cut out for us, but we're
| up for it!
| kadabra9 wrote:
| I don't disagree. Can certainly build a great business
| capturing part of that 13.5% with great, focused content. The
| challenge, similar to Netflix's big challenge is discovering
| and securing the right content. Good Luck.
| soheil wrote:
| Congrats on your launch here on HN. This does seem like a nice
| niche market to tackle. I think you're positioned well in the
| market for multiple reasons.
|
| I'd be worried about Netflix if they saw you're growing fast, but
| until then I doubt they'd be a threat. If they were courageous
| enough to do this they would have already, so most likely they're
| waiting for a player like you to prove that there is a large
| enough market for this before they pull the trigger. And I think
| by that time you should be large enough that it'd be just easier
| for them to acquire you instead.
|
| Second, if you build out your platform in a way that can be
| generalized it could be worth even more. The platform should be
| content agnostic so that it can be used for other underserved
| populations down the road.
|
| Sweet idea and good luck!
| volandovengo wrote:
| There are a lot of efforts to increase diversity in media.
|
| One effort that has been happening is providing incentives to
| have diverse top of the line staff on productions so that they
| share their stories and angle on things.
|
| We at wrapbook (https://www.wrapbook.com) at making it easy for
| productions to measure their diverse staff so that we can
| incentivize diversity down the line.
| yellowbanana wrote:
| There is a default opposition on anything that twitter activists
| have been protesting for in the past few years
|
| Netflix for Africans Netflix for Asians Netflix for Indians ...
| sounds normal.
|
| But
|
| Netflix for Black People Netflix for Women Netflix for LGBT
|
| Will definitely cause an outrage
|
| An other example on how we are tribal, even if the tribes are
| just activists vs non-activists.
| klyrs wrote:
| The existence of LGBT people has been an outrage for literally
| millennia. The portrayal of LGBT romance on screen is _still_
| an outrage to many, a threshold that Hallmark crossed for the
| first time just last year. So, don 't worry about us. We're
| used to the outrage.
| dathinab wrote:
| I don't think any "<GenericSerive>" for <Group>" sound normal.
|
| I mean if you need e.g. "Restrooms for Indians" implies that
| "other" Restrooms are somewhat not suited for Indians which
| normally hints to some major problem with discrimination.
|
| Just to be clear I explicitly mean "<GenericService>" not
| "<SpcificProduct>", e.g. black people often have a kind of hair
| which non-black people have rarely, as such a "Shampoo for
| Black People" (which is actually a "Shampoo for any kind of
| people with that kind of hair common with Black People") isn't
| that unreasonable. Similar a movie focused on living
| circumstances especially common with black people staring
| mostly black people is also likely mainly targeting black
| people as an audience.
|
| But Netflix (HBO, Disney) are not specific products but very
| generic services.
| yellowbanana wrote:
| News for programmers, would not really imply normal news is
| unsuitable for programmers.
|
| Since content is often relevant to a particular culture, and
| streaming platforms collect content together, focusing on
| content from one culture can make sense.
|
| Neflix is like the news, and Neflix for Black People/Culture
| would be like HN.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Good luck.
|
| Please remember to ignore this HN thread. I can already see it's
| becoming absolutely atrocious and is not even remotely
| representative of society at large.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Thank you. We'll do our best...with the company, and this
| thread!
| werber wrote:
| I hope you get some free press out of these outraged people,
| maybe they can do you a solid and help your company go viral
| and get it in front of the people who want it!
| jegaman wrote:
| >Skin color does not matter >Hey check out this X for black
| people >No it's not about skin color but culture
|
| I'm confused. Hint: it's the word "black" everywhere
| speedgoose wrote:
| .
| dang wrote:
| Flamewar comments like this will get you banned here. Please
| stick to the rules.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ntmathrow wrote:
| Probably work in progress. But jokes aside, I think the sole
| reason is the history of it. I think it would be perfectly
| entertained as an idea if people did not remember the
| segregation era.
| JacobDotVI wrote:
| >Hello Sunshine was founded by Witherspoon in 2016 to create
| content focused on female voices. ... "Kevin and Tom and our
| partners at Blackstone see what we see - women's stories matter,
| and we have economic power as consumers, creators and business
| leaders. Their commitment enables us to double-down on our
| mission and our ambitious growth agenda," Harden said in a
| release.
|
| Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine to be sold to Blackstone-
| backed media company for $900 million:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/02/reese-witherspoons-hello-sun...
| chemeng wrote:
| Yes, it's very interesting that "X for Women" seems non-
| controversial to most people, but "X for [underserved group]"
| brings out the trolls en masse.
| brownerd wrote:
| Perhaps if you tried to approach people with different views
| from you with an open mind and genuinely listened instead of
| calling them "trolls" you'd learn more interesting things.
|
| If you study the history of the world, "tribalism" in some
| sense is a common theme throughout all cultures, many wars
| and many injustices. It might have been "Protestant vs
| Catholic" or "Sunni vs Shiite" or "Serb vs Croat" or
| whichever tribal, ethnic, religious or language grouping was
| relevant to the area.
|
| In every single case, if the groups remained separated and
| saw one another as "othered" the problems spanned years and
| generations and the societies remained fractured and
| insecure. Only in the societies where people dropped the
| labels that separated them and merged into one identity did
| they thrive and improve conditions for all people. In short-
| the best way to help Black people in America isn't to
| perpetuate our separate identity, but to remove the power and
| significance of racial identifiers entirely.
| raclage wrote:
| > In short- the best way to help Black people in America
| isn't to perpetuate our separate identity, but to remove
| the power and significance of racial identifiers entirely.
|
| And you think the source of this power and significance
| is...media streaming companies?
| [deleted]
| rhcom2 wrote:
| This argument for a "colorblind" world view has been
| criticized extensively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color
| _blindness_(racial_classi...
| chemeng wrote:
| My point was more a question/observation as to why this is
| contentious, but "X for Women" is not seen as contentious.
|
| While I don't appreciate your condescending tone. I agree
| with you that "tribalism" is generally problematic.
| However, you'll also find that "tribalism" has also been
| essential throughout history for the persistence of
| marginalized people and their cultures. There is an
| inherent tension in many places and times throughout
| history between identity and assimilation.
|
| > but to remove the power and significance of racial
| identifiers entirely.
|
| The issue is not the power of the identifier, but the
| difference in societal treatment, amassed wealth and
| political power that flows along racial and socioeconomic
| lines.
|
| Which brings me back to my original point, why do we not
| see the same ire when talking about resources directly
| aimed at specific underserved needs of women?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Being black, but not a woman, it's difficult for me to
| validate the premise that people aren't as much in arms
| about "women's issues" as they are about "racial issues."
|
| However, while tribalism is definitely a thing, women are
| generally seen as being included in the tribe. Perhaps
| that's why you see it as being less contentious.
|
| I'll also point out that this "the difference in societal
| treatment, amassed wealth and political power that flows
| along racial and socioeconomic lines" is _exactly_ what
| results from the power of the identifier.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > why this is contentious, but "X for Women" is not seen
| as contentious.
|
| "X for Women" is seen as contentious. In fact, "X for
| Women" articles on HN often have all the same arguments,
| with gender in place of race, as this thread, with very
| slight changes, with focus on serving the unmet needs of
| women with regard to X painted as sexist and equivalent
| to external regulation based on gender role stereotypes
| just as this is compared to state-mandated segregated
| services.
| dcow wrote:
| I think it's because gender plays an important roll in
| society whereas race ~~does~~ _should_ not. Society doesn 't
| benefit from segregating and victimizing. Society does
| benefit, generally, from a strong female population.
| mkw2000 wrote:
| Huh?
| tekromancr wrote:
| Race plays an incredibly powerful role in society. Every
| aspect of your lived experience is shaped by it, in fact.
|
| From what resources you are likely to have available to you
| in childhood; how you are treated by the justice system;
| what jobs are available to you; your ability to get a
| mortgage despite having good credit.
| dcow wrote:
| I mean ideally, in a western liberal society of humans,
| race shouldn't matter in comparison to sex which has
| biological meaning and social function. Culture matters,
| but culture isn't race (at least not in a western liberal
| society).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Culture matters, but culture isn't race (at least not
| in a western liberal society).
|
| "Race" is, in origin, a mythology drawn around culture;
| it is either an actual ethnicity that is an in-group or
| an imaginary one ascribed on the basis of external
| appearance as an out-group. And the mere act of creating
| that distinction by an in-power group can create a shared
| experience reifying the ascribed ethnicity into a real
| one over time.
|
| But, no, race is not apart from culture, but a product
| and aspect of it.
| dcow wrote:
| Sure, I agree. So why do we need a Netflix for black
| people? How does that help? Why can't e.g. the existing
| Netflix simply air culturally black content if people are
| craving more of it? Why does the service itself need to
| be exclusive and segregated?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > So why do we need a Netflix for black people?
|
| Someone perceives an unmet need, and seeks to meet it.
|
| > Why can't e.g. the existing Netflix simply air
| culturally black content if people are craving more of
| it?
|
| They _could_. Someone with sufficient motivation and
| resources to launch a business thinks they aren 't.
| That's...kind of true of most startups--an incumbent
| _could_ meet the need they are marketing too, but they
| think the incumbents aren 't.
|
| > Why does the service itself need to be exclusive and
| segregated?
|
| The proposed offering is neither exclusive nor
| segregated; no one is excluding people from subscribing
| or segregating them.
| dcow wrote:
| My point is not that I think they're wrong for trying to
| address a market. Everybody is welcome to do that. My
| point is that we don't call Netflix "Netflix for white
| people" and it's not designed in an exclusive way such
| that it aims to only serve a white audience. I'm probably
| not conveying my sentiment well: please read it more as
| "I'm excited about this effort and want include myself as
| an audience member to help promote the content they are
| promoting." If you tell me your service is for black
| people then I am excluded. My initial comment that stared
| this sub-thread is that I see a social utility to having
| content "for women" since it's motivated by biology but I
| don't see a social utility to having content "for black
| people" since that seems racially motivated (which we
| agree is an expression of tribalism) and I don't find our
| tribal desires to assert subculture dominance to be
| productive in society. I view western liberalism as an
| effort to transcend tribalism where we treat all
| participate as equals rather than continue to divide into
| subcultures.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > My point is that we don't call Netflix "Netflix for
| white people" and it's not designed in an exclusive way
| such that it aims to only serve a white audience.
|
| Well, sure, because that's not their target market, but
| also because there isn't really a single predominant
| 'White culture' in the U.S., distinct from mainstream
| culture in general, in the same way that 'Black culture'
| was united by centuries of slavery and cultural
| destruction.
|
| But you can certainly find media out there specifically
| targeted at people of Irish descent, Spanish descent,
| British descent, etc. It's just less of a mass-market
| thing because those groups don't have as much in the way
| of a distinct culture from the 'mainstream'.
| tptacek wrote:
| There are plenty of outlets for distinctively and
| unapologetically ethnic content that serve other
| ethnicities; we don't know about them not because there
| isn't much of it, but because we're not the intended
| audience. I'm not watching any Polish-language dramas
| because I don't speak Polish, but they certainly exist,
| as do Korean soap operas and Japanese game shows. We hear
| about some of these things when they break into the
| mainstream, but most of it doesn't.
|
| We don't even get all the _English-language_ culture
| there is around the world. Easy example: most of us are
| totally unfamiliar with popular Christian media.
|
| Really, the appeal being made by people objecting to this
| site is that Black people shouldn't have sites that
| nurture that kind of content, because it somehow squicks
| white people out. That is a weird argument to make, and
| not one these founders should take seriously.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Really, the appeal being made by people objecting to
| this site is that Black people shouldn't have sites that
| nurture that kind of content, because it somehow squicks
| white people out.
|
| At least some people are arguing that it should exist,
| but should not be marketed to the demographic it is
| designed to appeal to, because it squicks white people
| out not that black content exists, but that people
| marketing it acknowledge that it is designed to appeal to
| the unmet needs of black consumers, because white people
| want to buy it but not if the marketing says it was
| designed to meet black interests.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My point is that we don't call Netflix "Netflix for
| white people"
|
| Well, no, because Netflix is the example that defines the
| segment; that dominant incumbents tend to be focussed on
| the preferences of the dominant socioeconomic cultural
| segment, which is predominantly White in the United
| States, is...not a novel observation.
|
| For many people, IOW, the "for White people" is implied.
|
| > My initial comment that stared this sub-thread is that
| I see a social utility to having content "for women"
| since it's motivated by biology
|
| Content "for women" is often not "motivated by biology",
| but, more to the point...
|
| > but I don't see a social utility to having content "for
| black people"
|
| Who cares? It's not seeking government subsidy, or
| proposing the existence of a _social_ (externalized)
| good, its proposing meeting an unmet _private_ need.
| tptacek wrote:
| It "helps" by satisfying a market need for a space for
| Black creators to tell Black stories without shouldering
| a burden to translate, soften, or attenuate that culture
| for other audiences, as would be the expectation on a
| mass media cable channel. It's not complicated; venues
| like this serve all sorts of ethnicities.
| dcow wrote:
| I think like many have pointed out, there's a messaging
| issue. I want to feel like I'm welcome, even though I'm
| not culturally black, to consume content created by black
| creators on a platform that helps promote that content. I
| like k-pop, I like Bollywood, I like Sister Deborah, I
| generally enjoy experiencing other culture. I don't need
| attenuation. One of the strengths of America is the
| capacity for cultural exchange. "Netflix for black
| people" does not achieve that. It makes me feel unwelcome
| on the platform and triggers angst related to my
| opposition to the idea of asserting ownership over and
| further segregating sub-cultures being part of the
| solution space. If BlackOak is truly trying to promote
| black cultural exchange, then don't use exclusive
| language. I really have no problem with a production
| company like BET geared at being a space to promote a
| given subculture. Personally, If I was the founder, I'd
| welcome this type of feedback even if it feels tired
| because the appropriate messaging may be integral to the
| success of the venture.
|
| Edit: Want to also point out that in practice we don't
| seem to attenuate messaging in black pop culture. It's
| some of the most explicit sexual and sometimes violent
| content in existence and it appears all over radio, TV,
| and the internet. I'm not saying it's exclusively that,
| but it doesn't seem to suffer from expectation that it be
| attenuated "for white people". If that were happening I'd
| immediately be on the side of any effort to stop
| censoring it because I believe in freedom of expression.
| tptacek wrote:
| They're not trying to promote Black cultural exchange.
| That's not the point. Rather, argumentative message board
| nerds are telling them that's what they need to be doing,
| rather than serving the customers they really need to
| love them. They would do well not to take that advice,
| not least because it is not, in the main, well-
| intentioned.
| dcow wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're suggesting about my intentions
| or those of people giving honest feedback here. If
| BlackOak is only interested in black viewers, then good
| luck. They simply won't be getting my money or attention,
| then, since I don't identify as culturally black.
| Personally I don't see why their (or any) platform needs
| to be exclusive to further their mission. If I made a
| "Neflix for white people", what do you think the response
| would be?
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know anything about your intentions, but this
| whole thread is a good illustration of, again, something
| YC tells people all the time: start by making something
| that a few people love, rather than something that
| everyone will like a little bit, or, worse, just not
| object to.
| dcow wrote:
| Well I don't disagree there. Maybe I've just spoken
| sloppily. I wish BlackOak success in their mission. And I
| hope at some point I can be part of their vision for
| audience. Everything else I've said can simply be
| considered feedback, which I think the founder solicited
| in the OP.
| tptacek wrote:
| You easily can be part of their envisioned audience. You
| just have to be interested in video content that is
| unapologetically centered in Black culture, and that
| isn't burning any of its narrative fuel trying to make
| that cultural background feel familiar or especially
| palatable to other cultures. I think that sounds pretty
| neat, if they can pull it off with good content.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think like many have pointed out, there's a messaging
| issue. I want to feel like I'm welcome, even though I'm
| not culturally black, to consume content created by black
| creators on a platform that helps promote that content.
|
| I don't see a messaging problem. I see you positing a
| _different_ unmet need than the one that firm here has
| identified and is addressing. Which is fine, but "Netflix
| for people who want Black-created content but get icky
| feeling about products marketed to Black audiences" is, I
| suspect, a much narrower niche, and certainly a
| _different_ niche, than BlackOakTV seems interested in
| serving, whose existence (to the extent it exists) does
| nothing to invalidate the niche BlackOakTV _is_ trying to
| address or their efforts to do so.
| filoeleven wrote:
| > Edit: Want to also point out that in practice we don't
| seem to attenuate messaging in black pop culture. It's
| some of the most explicit sexual and sometimes violent
| content in existence and it appears all over radio, TV,
| and the internet. I'm not saying it's exclusively that,
| but it doesn't seem to suffer from expectation that it be
| attenuated "for white people".
|
| Why do you think that this messaging is what you
| associate most with black pop culture? Attenuated
| messaging does not have to be universal. Imagine if white
| pop culture was almost exclusively promoted as Britney
| Spears et al., Dumb and Dumber, and slasher flicks. Is
| that an accurate portrayal, or a curated subset that
| projects a certain image?
| crooked-v wrote:
| "Race shouldn't matter" is a fine thing to say, but is a
| really unhelpful principle for those people for whom it
| can't not matter.
|
| Or to put it another way, with an example: I'm sure there
| are plenty of non-religiously-observant American Jews who
| would be happy to treat race as a non-entity, but that's
| not much of an option for them when anti-Jewish slander
| and violence is an ongoing part of society.
| dcow wrote:
| So if all subgroups are subject to slander directed at
| their subgroup, then why is the answer to further
| segregate subgroups and create segregated services that
| only cater to certain subgroups?
| crooked-v wrote:
| > and create segregated services that only cater to
| certain subgroups
|
| I fail to see the "segregated" and "only" parts.
| Marketing to a particular demographic and reflecting the
| life experiences of that demographic doesn't mean that
| other demographics aren't allowed, nor does it mean that
| nobody else is going to be interested.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| X for women is controversial on HN too.
| fny wrote:
| Some feedback:
|
| 1. What is your cost per episode? Can your subscription fee
| sustain realistically sustain that?
|
| 2. Your design needs improvement, at least on desktop. Haven't
| looked at the apps yet. If you expect "product" do be your
| differentiator, there's a LOT of work. Also, I'm not sure this is
| a sufficient competitive advantage. (a) its replicable (b) I've
| never seen this as a reason for people to pick one content
| provider over another: content is king.
|
| 3. Do you plan to incorporate content from existing content
| providers or remain purely indie?
|
| 4. A lot of the shows are short and production quality varies. Do
| you have any concern that people might consume all the "good"
| content of interest and now have anything else to watch?
|
| 5. You all have some filters that aren't meaningful like
| "Author". These authors are so niche, I have never heard of them,
| making the filter useless. There's also a draft filter showing
| up!
|
| 6. You need to make it easier for people to sample content before
| going through the friction of installing an app or registering.
| Maybe a trailer plus the first 5 minutes of an episode? Right now
| I don't feel compelled to watch anything else or sign up because
| the page is a little janky and I can't really tell what some of
| the shows are about from the trailers.
|
| 7. Netflix had the initial advantage of not focusing on content
| creation, and instead leveraged existing content. Why not solely
| focus on distribution instead of cutting checks to creators for
| original content?
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| These are tremendous questions! Ones we need to continue to
| think through, but I can share our early thoughts...
|
| 1. Content cost: Generally speaking, and assuming capital
| raises, we will only buy content that our subscription revenues
| can sustain. And over time, we do intend to raise our price as
| the service gets better.
|
| 2. Product: Yes, the product is far from perfect. We wanted to
| get in market with content, and iterate on product as we learn.
| We're largely leveraging third-parties to hold this thing up,
| but we will make improvements just as any product does. In
| terms of it being a differentiator, it's just that different,
| not necessarily defensible. But the way the market sits, we're
| the only ones interested in doing that. But I get your point,
| it's not like Netflix has a game-changing technology advantage
| over all the companies chasing them.
|
| 3. Content diversification: We hope to have the most, and best,
| black content on the planet.
|
| 4. Lack of content: Yes, we're very early, and I'm worried
| about not having enough content. But we will continue to add to
| it as we grow. We definitely do not plan to stay where we're
| at, but where we're at does work for our super-niche demo w/in
| the greater black community at this point.
|
| 5. UX/filtering/etc.: Thank you for calling those site issues
| out. We aim to fix those this weekend!
|
| 6. Content sampling: Agreed. We should, and will, make it
| easier to do that. However, the 7-day free trial mitigates that
| to some degree. Additionally, people generally don't just land
| on our site/homepage randomly. They usually have seen a trailer
| or come through a landing page that features (and describes) a
| specific show.
|
| 7. Just be a curator: Netflix also had the advantage of doing
| this 10+ years ago, so we can't change that. The truth is that
| with today's number of options, you have to have content that
| people can't get elsewhere. Plus, as I've alluded to in the
| comments, working directly with creators has been a big part of
| acquiring subscribers for us, and will likely continue to be
| so.
| illuminati1911 wrote:
| Maybe(?) the intension is good behind this kind of services, but
| honestly this is #1 reason why we will never get rid of racism.
| It just gets rebranded and will stay with as long as there are
| humans.
| mefailenglish wrote:
| > Maybe(?) the intension _[sic]_ is good behind this _[sic]_
| kind of services
|
| This is the "#1 reason why we will never get rid of racism?!"
| Not, say, racists? Or race supremacists?
|
| Is there something racist about this platform or its creators?
| I didn't see where they said they think one race is superior to
| another.
| stankyleg wrote:
| Thank you for your honesty. Not just admitting how hard it is
| for you to spell basic words, but also admitting you're
| gullible enough to believe this is the #1 reason we'll never
| get rid of racism: a streaming platform for black creators.
|
| Few people could actually believe that, even fewer have the
| courage to say it.
| Trias11 wrote:
| Considering current social and political climate in US this may
| work.
|
| Imagine the scary pushback if replacing "black" with other color.
| bavell wrote:
| I wish the founders the best but I'll admit the headline did rub
| me the wrong way at first. Just a little too on-the-nose or
| something. I definitely understand trying to reach an undeserved
| market, just feels weird so explicitly segmenting by race... In
| any case, good luck on your launch!
| kitcar wrote:
| Out of curiosity - you mention that in the 90's there were a
| number of TV shows featuring prominent black characters but there
| isn't anymore. Why did you decide the solution to that problem
| was to create a black-focused distribution platform, instead of
| production company focused on creating new shows of similar
| quality to those in the 90's - has something changed about the
| market that would prevent shows like those that were successful
| in the 1990's from being successful today?
| Server6 wrote:
| Not OP, but yeah the market has clearly changed. Everything we
| consume today and media in general has been fractured,
| organized into subcategories, and is now delivered by
| algorithms.
|
| I my opinion the problem isn't that there is no demand for
| black-focused media, its that its just become another
| subcategory of Netflix. And because it may not be as popular on
| Netflix it doesn't get as much production. Look at what Netflix
| is producing these days - its mostly lowest common denominator
| algorithm driven garbage.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > Look at what Netflix is producing these days - its mostly
| lowest common denominator algorithm driven garbage.
|
| This, the best content on Netflix in the last two or three
| years for my taste are largely foreign productions
| pseudo0 wrote:
| Yeah, at various points I've seen promoted categories for
| black created/focused content pop up on Netflix, YouTube,
| Amazon Prime, etc. It's going to be tough for a new service
| to compete with the substantial existing libraries of those
| streaming services. They already have the content and the
| audience, and just have to tweak their recommender to promote
| it more effectively.
| gunshai wrote:
| But why would it not be as popular on netflix, amazon, hulu,
| ect?
| imbnwa wrote:
| Amazon actually produces the highest quality Black content
| _consistently_ : Underground Railroad, One Night in Miami,
| Homecoming, Life, etc
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| That's a great point. I think both things probably need to be
| done. We took the distribution route, because ultimately we
| believe it's the direct relationship with the consumer that
| will allow for this to work. As a production company, you're a
| step away from the end-user, so you're at the mercy of a
| distribution company that has more than just the black audience
| to worry about. But if a company is solely focused on a single
| niche, like so many tech companies out there, the economics for
| super-serving that niche are a lot better.
| mbesto wrote:
| > We took the distribution route, because ultimately we
| believe it's the direct relationship with the consumer that
| will allow for this to work.
|
| Be honest. It's less capital intensive, with much higher
| valuations.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Generally, your points about capital and valuations are
| true. Of course, I could argue Netflix is way more capital
| intensive than any production company. And then, with Hello
| Sunshine and others, we're seeing production companies get
| Venture scale exits. So while I hear your point, those
| honestly weren't factors for us. It was more so about
| owning the relationship with the end-user.
| Veen wrote:
| But what are you going to distribute if no one is making
| high-quality media for Black people?
| thisthat112233 wrote:
| I think what he's suggesting is that lack of distribution
| may be contributing to / causing the lack of quality black
| programming. By setting up a distribution company, they can
| now create a channel for quality work that exists but isn't
| currently being distributed.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| You are right about focusing on tiny niches is more
| profitable. The trouble is that this is corrosive to our
| society. Our extremely multicultural nation historically
| depended on popular media to create a homogeneous base from
| which to build our interactions upon. This product is
| advancing the corrosion of that base and separating us
| further.
| Miner49er wrote:
| I think we're already well past the point of return on
| that. It's not the 90s anymore where everyone watches the
| same 2 sitcoms or whatever. There's YouTube, Twitch, and
| like a dozen different streaming services out there. People
| don't all watch the same stuff anymore.
|
| I assume you are just as critical of things like
| Crunchyroll?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Crunchyroll doesn't market itself as being by Asians, for
| Asians, and about Asians. It focuses on a specific genre
| of television that just happens to originate from Asia.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| The reaction by the admins and community to this
| blatantly racist and discriminatory product have me
| sickened to my core. Any comment pointing out the
| negative impacts of profiting off of our increasing
| racial divisions has been suppressed.
|
| I'm turning off of this site for a while.
| tekromancr wrote:
| Nothing is stopping you from consuming content that centers
| Black people. There has been an absolute renesance in the
| last few years of stories that focus on black lives in ways
| that haven't really been told in pop culture before,
| especially in TV.
|
| And the best part is these shows are good! They are really
| fucking good!
|
| Nothing is stopping you from consuming that content and
| incorporating into that homogeneous base upon which you
| build your interactions.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| "Netflix for black people" clearly isn't inclusive. It's
| clearly divisive and amplifying racial identity.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| But it would take Netflix just one or two demo-specific
| properties to win that demo back. Unless the goal is to be
| acquired.
| yaacov wrote:
| It doesn't have to be either-or, lots of people have
| multiple streaming services
| emodendroket wrote:
| I read the average American has four. Seems like more
| than one person could reasonably watch but maybe I'm just
| not devoted enough to television.
| swman wrote:
| It's a yc (VC backed) company. You know the goal.
| dang wrote:
| Hmm, interesting comment: it could mean either of two
| opposite things, but that makes it self-contradictory!
|
| Just for clarity, when YC funds a company, the goal is
| not to have it get acquired. It's to have it go public.
| Acquisition interrupts that, so it's a suboptimal
| outcome. That said, YC supports what founders want to do.
| salamanderman wrote:
| Netflix was a distribution platform before it became a
| production company as well. If you have a revue stream from
| existing content then you have the money to make content. Also,
| if minorities have content that they want to be seen, they'll
| potentially have a better shot here because of the focus. So
| from this website's perspective, there might not be a shortage
| of content to licence right out of the gate, compared to what
| they could create themselves. Also, it sounds like they know
| how to make websites.
| rory wrote:
| Subjectively-- many of the best "black" shows in the 90s were
| in the _Traditional Sitcom_ category-- Fresh Prince, Martin,
| Family Matters, Steve Harvey show, etc.. Even though they
| touched on black issues, 80% of the shows ' content was
| "typical American experience".
|
| Perhaps the niche-ification of streamed content has resulted in
| Black shows that don't feel relevant to non-black people. And
| since the majority don't feel it's applicable to them, they
| lose the algorithm game.
|
| Just a guess, I don't have any real evidence to back this up.
| But if that's the problem, it seems like it would be solved by
| this startup.
| skyde wrote:
| I really don't think the middle class black peoples will love
| watching that kind of show but I might be wrong.
| dhosek wrote:
| I can think of a few major factors that impacted the market in
| the 90s:
|
| 1. Fox/WB/UPN. These fledgling networks broadcast a lot of
| black-oriented content trying to grab a foothold in the market.
| This in turn spurred ABC/NBC/CBS to do the same to avoid losing
| market share.
|
| 2. Bill Cosby. The success of the Cosby show in the 80s/early
| 90s instigated a lot of attempts to grab a piece of that
| market. Cosby had further success with the spin-off show A
| Different World (which was notable also as being the only TV
| show at its time to focus on Gen X characters).
| frereubu wrote:
| I would imagine it's got a lot to do with domain knowledge.
| Setting up a streaming service is a very different proposition
| from setting up a production company. These are presumably tech
| people, not TV people. Besides, I bet setting up a production
| company is a few orders of magnitude more expensive than this.
| vlunkr wrote:
| This was my thought as well. I'm sure there is demand for this
| content, but is it a strong enough demand to pay for yet
| another streaming service?
| [deleted]
| ntmathrow wrote:
| Can someone do the analysis from a game theory perspective to see
| what harms/benefits something like this can cause to the larger
| society? And if that is too complex to analyze (my suspicion)
| isn't this dangerous if we don't fully understand the negative
| consequences of it?
| enriquto wrote:
| Offtopic, but not being from the USA I have real trouble
| understanding the concept of "blackness" in that country. What
| does it mean, exactly, to be black? Is it a genetic, a phenotypic
| or a cultural thing? How is it determined whether mixed-race
| people are black? And what about trans-racially adopted children?
| Does a black kid adopted by a white family become white? Does a
| white kid adopted by a black family become black? If two mixed-
| race siblings have different tone of skin, can one of them be
| black and the other white? I cannot manage to answer all these
| questions simultaneously without blatant contradictions, unless I
| assume (apparently, wrongly) that "being black or not" is not a
| partition of the set of all people.
|
| In my country, in europe, it would seem that being black is not
| an identity but merely a physical characteristic like being
| blonde. I have never raised the issue explicitly, but I guess my
| black colleagues at work would not appreciate being classified as
| a different identity just for their skin color.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| How does your country fare with its perception of Romani
| "Gypsies"
| enriquto wrote:
| It's definitely a 100% cultural thing. I know a "mixed"
| couple and they have chosen to raise the kids as "non-roma",
| much to the chagrin of a few elders on the roma side of the
| family. It could have been the other way round. It also helps
| that the skin color is not different, and pretty much anybody
| around here can "pass" as roma or non-roma just by adopting a
| few mannerisms.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Maybe I just have enough black friends in Hollywood, but in the
| past few years, the following shows from black showrunners all
| made the cultural zeitgist on broadcast tv: Blackish, Empire, How
| to Get Away with Murder, and Bob and Abishola; and on on
| cable/streaming: Atlanta, Insecure, Power, Dear White People,
| Lovecraft Country, and I May Destroy You. (Note, I am friends
| with some of the writing staff and crew on several of these
| shows, so I am aware that I am not representative of the general
| public.)
|
| And that doesn't even include anything on BET, or shows with
| black executive producers or showrunners but which were based on
| existing IP or were from non-black creators, like LA's Finest,
| All Rise, The Neighborhood, or the Shondaland shows.
|
| And really, the big elephant in the room is BET. Which does
| everything you want to do, but it already has the connections to
| the black creators, and the black audience, and the black
| investors.
|
| So it kind of seems like this is another SV startup that was
| created without a critical examination of what the market
| actually is beyond hoping to be potential acquisition target for
| an actual player (in this case, presumably BET).
| tootie wrote:
| I would not be surprised if acquisition by BET is the exit
| strategy.
| rasen58 wrote:
| Just curious, but how do you have so many friends in Hollywood?
| (Feel free to email me directly if wanted)
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I live in LA and met them through work and friends.
|
| I posted your link in one of our group chats. If any of them
| reach out to you it means they're interested. However, I
| wouldn't get my hopes up, critiques from the chat thread so
| far:
|
| -"so it's quibi for black people"
|
| -trying to be BET "for indies" but without backing it up with
| the funding, marketing, audience, mentorship opportunities,
| or industry connections
|
| -based on out NY, but the hearts of the black TV industry are
| Atlanta and LA (BET is hq'd in NY, so I think this one was
| about where the talent/crew are located rather than the
| execs)
|
| -featured shows on front page: "First Dates" has promise if
| marketed properly. "Trifecta" tested poorly with all the
| women in the chat ("hell no"). Nobody could figure out what
| "The Retreat" was about and based on the trailer they weren't
| interested in finding out.
|
| - the website is amateurish, the copy is basic and doesn't
| inspire interest, and "looks like a fly-by-night operation"
|
| - "they need to hire a marketing team ASAP"
|
| - "it's all stuff BET rejected" (this was from someone who
| works at BET)
| dang wrote:
| Just for clarity, I don't think the commenter you were
| replying to there is affiliated with this startup. I was
| confused at first by what you meant by "your link".
| tptacek wrote:
| Just for whatever this is worth to you, and I know you
| probably already know this, but networks rejected Breaking
| Bad, The Walking Dead, South Park, Mad Men, and, I think
| most infamously, Stranger Things.
|
| There's nothing wrong with that --- perhaps the networks
| involved should have rejected those shows! You pick one,
| you gotta turn down another one. But having more venues
| specialized in a specific type of show means that, for
| instance, when BET passes on your thing, it can still find
| a home somewhere else.
|
| I don't know anything about these particular shows. But
| look at the first couple episodes of Broad City --- not the
| extremely successful TV show, but the low budget web series
| that started it all.
|
| The rest of these points are probably well taken!
| ldargin wrote:
| Those may all be perfectly good shows. But there is space for
| them (BlackOakTV) if the market is really underserved.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| I'd say you have a fair point about the competition, but not
| about their being a lack of critical examination. A critical
| examination of the market would yield the fact that surveyed
| black viewers want more content targeted at them, don't feel
| fully represented even in the existing black content that's out
| there, and that despite an admittedly (and perhaps temporary)
| spike in black content, an estimated $10b in revenue is being
| left on the table due to the mismatch between the supply of
| black content and the demand for it by black viewers.
|
| So yes, BET, and others, are going after this market. We looked
| at the landscape and decided there was something different we
| could do that wasn't just unique, but likely execute in a
| manner that the incumbents could not realistically pull off.
|
| BET--to use your own example--is owned by Viacom, whose two
| biggest strategic revenue plays are growing Paramount+ and
| licensing their content/channels to other distributors. Thus,
| BET can never be all the way in on serving the black audience,
| as Viacom will always look to maximize a piece of content
| through the channel that makes it the most money--usually one
| of the two I just mentioned.
|
| There's also the product side, where none of the incumbents
| have invested in, and the large players, have actually
| disintermediated themselves by selling through other products
| like Amazon and Roku channels. Now we haven't built out a
| differentiated product yet either, but it's on the roadmap and
| you can be assured that disintermediation is not a strategy
| we're interested in.
|
| Yet I understand your criticism...this idea is not new, has
| lots of competition, and is late to a game that has already
| started. But no one said this would be easy, and we have a
| differentiated approach that we believe gives us a strong shot
| at success.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Maybe it's just because I have more exposure to the Hollywood
| side of this than you do, but you're very dismissive of BET
| and your other Hollywood competitors in a way that suggests
| you didn't do your research and that you're thinking that
| your tech backgrounds will magically let you jump into this
| market without actually knowing how it works.
|
| _BET can never be all the way in on serving the black
| audience, as Viacom will always look to maximize a piece of
| content through the channel that makes it the most money_
|
| Yes, BET is owned by Viacom, but unlike CBS, BET runs, and
| has run, largely as an independent unit, has its own
| financials, has control over its own studios and IP, and _has
| its own streaming service, BET+_. I really hope you haven 't
| staked your entire business plan on a fundamental
| misunderstanding of how BET operates.
|
| _There 's also the product side, where none of the
| incumbents have invested in_
|
| This is simply wrong. Every year, BET spends several
| multiples of what you've raised to date on developing new
| talent. Not only that but recent indie darlings I May Destroy
| You and Dear White People were both the product of
| _conventional_ studios...
|
| But if by product you mean the delivery mechanism aka
| website, then your website simply isn't anything special, and
| it's definitely an inferior product compared to any your
| competitors right now. (It's irrelevant what you might have
| on your roadmap; customers will judge you based on what you
| have _right now._ )
|
| _and the large players, have actually disintermediated
| themselves by selling through other products like Amazon and
| Roku channels. Now we haven 't built out a differentiated
| product yet either, but it's on the roadmap and you can be
| assured that disintermediation is not a strategy we're
| interested in._
|
| ??? Are you actually dismissing your competitors being
| available on Amazon and Roku? The point of being on Amazon
| and Roku is to expand the potential audience, not to
| "disintermediate" themselves. If your goal is to be web-only,
| you're relegating yourself to never-was status. Note that HBO
| Max's interfaces online, on my LG TV, and on my Roku are
| virtually identical (the same is true of Disney+, and
| Netflix's respective interfaces).
|
| _But no one said this would be easy, and we have a
| differentiated approach that we believe gives us a strong
| shot at success._
|
| As far as I can tell, your "differentiated approach" is to
| try and cheap your way into the market with a library of low-
| budget indie productions. _This is a viable strategy_ to make
| money...if your plan is to resell those rights on to bigger
| studios /streamers, or use the rights to redevelop the IP.
| (See e.g., Saban of Power Rangers fame and his sizable
| library of old Japanese shows, or Blumhouse and horror). I
| had a number of other clients who also made good money
| reselling IP they bought on the cheap, but the key to this
| business strategy is knowing who wants to buy and how much
| they're willing to pay.
|
| But let's be serious: do you honestly believe that there is a
| $10 billion market for low-budget indie tv crap targeting
| black viewers? Because that's bigger than the non-targeted
| market for indie television in the U.S. (and note that Disney
| pulled in just over $11 billion in 2019 with _mass market
| fare_ ), so I'd have to seriously question both the inputs
| and the financial model that could have led to such a
| ridiculous number.
| beervirus wrote:
| Racism is ok when black people do it, huh.
| Tunecrew wrote:
| Best of luck with this!
|
| Many persons are not going to understand the need or motivation
| for this, but that's fine, it is not for them.
| jedberg wrote:
| Everyone else has given you some good advice on your messaging,
| so I'll give you some business/technical advice as a former
| Netflix employee:
|
| Try to negotiate your contracts with global streaming rights. It
| shouldn't cost too much more but will make your life a lot easier
| as you try to expand globally. That was one thing that slowed
| Netflix's global expansion -- a lot of the content was not
| globally licensed.
|
| You _will_ have to develop a very robust system for identifying a
| user 's location based on IP address as well as advanced proxy
| detection. Maybe not at first, but as you move up into more
| "Hollywood" productions they will require you to show that you
| are protecting their content from theft. You will also have to
| show that you are encrypting everything with DRM, or they won't
| license content to you.
|
| Don't try to stream your video from AWS. Netflix uses AWS as the
| control plane but built their own CDN, and some of how they build
| it is publicly available:
| https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/. Before they built
| their own CDN, they used Akamai and Level 3.
|
| Try to build your system for future white label resale. If you're
| successful, maybe some Asian or Hispanic filmmakers will be
| interested in a platform focused on their needs. If you build it
| for white labeling you could potentially resell it for them (this
| is how HBO started streaming, by buying what MLB had built).
|
| Here are the Netflix black content categories that I know about,
| but there could be more:
|
| https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81299227
|
| https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81305957
|
| Good luck! It's a hard space to compete in, and if Netflix starts
| to notice you I can see them trying to copy you, but hopefully
| you'll be big enough by then to fend them off!
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Hey...this is really great stuff! Thank you so much for this.
| This...this is what I was hoping for!
| bsid wrote:
| If you'd rather use a service to help identify user's
| location && advanced proxy detection (plus more advanced user
| management stuff, I'd love to chat about it with you, let me
| know (email in profile!) This painful stuff is what we
| specialize in at https://clerk.dev .
|
| Congrats on the launch!!
| goronbjorn wrote:
| > this is how HBO started streaming, by buying what MLB had
| built
|
| I think you might be referring to Disney/Disney+ and BAMTech -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Streaming_Services
|
| (Super helpful answer by the way!!)
| jedberg wrote:
| Nope I was referring to HBOGo. Bamtech's first customer was
| HBOGo before Disney bought them.
| goronbjorn wrote:
| Ah! Had no idea. Guess the point is true twice over then.
| What a quietly great company.
| mempko wrote:
| This is the quality content I'm here for from HN!
| brownerd wrote:
| Ethically, I wouldn't want to work at a company which profits
| from encouraging the segregation by race which has unfortunately
| become socially acceptable again, but clearly many on HN have
| embraced the paradoxical double-standards where segregation and
| discrimination on the basis of color of skin is good as long as
| it's done for/against the right groups.
|
| As a purely business concern, it seems like you're going to
| struggle against an already crowded marketplace. Netflix is
| already "Netflix for black people" (as are Hulu, Prime Video,
| etc). They've been focused on creating and promoting that content
| for years and already have multiple categories based on race,
| gender, sexuality, ethnic background, etc. Do you expect users to
| switch away from those services or add another service on top of
| the existing ones?
| sombremesa wrote:
| I think people who are being downvoted in this thread have valid
| points, and they're not really critiquing the company, rather the
| problem seems to be your messaging.
|
| You shouldn't say "Netflix for black people" because Netflix is
| for black people already. Moreover if I start selling boxed water
| called "water for black people" with black stories on the carton,
| I'm unnecessarily limiting my audience (even alienating some)
| just via my poor choice of name.
|
| Ironically, some of those alienated are going to be black people
| themselves - such naming will certainly stir memories of the
| segregation era, don't you think?
| bishoprook2 wrote:
| >You shouldn't say "Netflix for black people" because Netflix
| is for black people already.
|
| Judging from the Netflix recommended videos and casting for
| Netflix originated shows, I'd say that goal has been achieved
| at this point.
|
| You do have to wonder how overlooked Spanish speakers must
| feel. That's probably where the real money is in 'Netflix for
| xxx people'.
| axaxs wrote:
| I think any 'foreign' demographic would be a rather big hit.
| I know plenty of folks who watch just one or two foreign
| language stations, because that's all that really cater to or
| interest them.
|
| There's definitely been more movement in the space, but it's
| still really lacking. I can't imagine it would cost a ton to
| license most foreign content for the US, which they currently
| have 0 percent market share of.
| zentiggr wrote:
| You make it sound like segregation end... the last few years,
| and especially the state voting laws passed in the past year,
| show that while it may not be explicit law anymore, it is still
| certainly what a lot of people are fighting to do in any way
| possible.
|
| I (as a middle age white male) WANT people to be thinking about
| because it's still happening 24/7, and people who aren't
| bigoted should be aware and pushing back every minute, in every
| way they can.
|
| Saying "X for black people" is a cultural focus, on the same
| level as "Finnish music" or "Flamenco dance" or "Swahili
| language".
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > people who aren't bigoted should be aware and pushing back
| every minute, in every way they can.
|
| Nah man, I think just being not-bigoted and intolerant of
| directly witnessed bigotry is good enough.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's hard to tell how serious you are, based on the first
| couple of words, but that tactic seems to have failed.
| Racism is widespread and, according to some data and
| personal experience, has broadened and deepened in the last
| few years.
|
| If we want something to change, we'll have to act. African-
| Americans are only ~1/7th of the US population - not enough
| to make changes themselves.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Oh really? Black americans are totally disempowered to
| make any changes at all? I couldn't disagree more, and
| object to your denial of agency to these people.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| If I'd said that, I'd agree with your response. Have a
| great day!
| thegrimmest wrote:
| _" African-Americans are only ~1/7th of the US population
| - not enough to make changes themselves"_
|
| _- wolverine876_
|
| I'm saying it _is_ enough. It 's _always_ enough.
| skyde wrote:
| try getting a recent kid book focused on black culture but
| that isn't also racist and try to portray white peoples as
| evil. I have not been able to find any.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Strangely Telemundo/Univision's American arms don't have to
| deal with this type of criticism. The "for" is clearly
| indicating a target audience, not that you can't sign-up if
| you're not Black with photo identification, which is the
| courts' criteria for illegal discrimination and segregation.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Spanish-speaking is not a physical trait is it?
| jacobriis wrote:
| Just for context those channels are more culturally
| specific than "Spanish-speakers" it's basically Mexican
| which isn't interchangeable with Spain or Bolivia for
| example.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Telemundo was founded by Puerto Ricans/Boricuas in Miami
| FYI, and both expressly target the Hispanic public in
| America with content of various origins.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Majority of Black Americans are a distinct shared
| cultural group, like Hispanic folk, who come in many
| different pigments, also like Hispanic folk, who also
| tend to have an identifiable manner of speaking and
| protocol, also like Hispanic folk.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| The problem is that while "hispanic" indicates a
| linguistic origin, "black" (like "white") indicates a
| physical trait - having skin pigment past an arbitrary
| threshold of darkness/lightness. You can be black and
| hispanic, or white and hispanic. You can't be a white
| black american, even if that accurately describes your
| skin and culture respectively.
|
| Also, you're problematically lumping all sorts of people
| who happen to have dark skin into a single category. The
| African immigrants I know want nothing to do with
| "american black culture" and resent being associated with
| it.
|
| Finally, in order to be able to discuss these issues
| clearly, it's important to have distinct terms. If
| someone wants to criticize "american black culture", they
| cannot do so without being labelled as racist, despite
| that fact that criticism of cultural practices is
| generally accepted.
|
| Basically we have two concepts:
|
| 1) Being "black" - being of african descent and/or being
| above a certain threshold of darkness in skin pigment. We
| should not tolerate discrimination for being black. It's
| also worth noting that this sort of categorization of
| people into black/white is not very scientific.
|
| 2) Belonging to American slave-descended culture. You can
| belong to this cultural group regardless of your skin
| color. We should be tolerant of criticism of this
| culture's ideology and practices.
|
| These two concepts need different names. I'm aware
| "slave-descended" isn't an ideal (if accurate) name, so
| open to suggestions here.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, Black culture is not simply about skin tone.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| That was... my point? My point is that "black person" is
| a problematic and overloaded descriptor. It can imply a
| cultural group ("american black culture") to which a
| light-skinned person can belong (can't they?) and which
| it should be tolerable to criticize.
|
| It can also imply a simple physical descriptor of traits
| belonging to African-descended people. Is an ethnic
| Nigerian born and raised there black? Do they belong to
| "American black culture"? So are they black and not-black
| at the same time? Do you see the problem(s) here?
| imbnwa wrote:
| >That was... my point? My point is that "black person" is
| a problematic and overloaded descriptor. It can imply a
| cultural group ("american black culture") to which a
| light-skinned person can belong (can't they?) and which
| it should be tolerable to criticize.
|
| I literally wrote "Majority of Black Americans...who come
| in many different pigments"
|
| > It can also imply a simple physical descriptor of
| traits belonging to African-descended people. Is an
| ethnic Nigerian born and raised there black? Do they
| belong to "American black culture"? So are they black and
| not-black at the same time? Do you see the problem(s)
| here?
|
| This is why I wrote "Majority" but you should also
| consult a Nigerian-American
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Let's try it this way:
|
| "A lot of hispanic countries have problems with drug
| cartels, crime and corruption"
|
| vs.
|
| "A lot of black communities have problems with drugs,
| violence and poor educational outcomes"
|
| It's pretty easy to accuse the latter statement of being
| racist isn't it? Not so much the former though huh? Why
| do you think that is?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It's pretty easy to accuse the latter statement of
| being racist isn't it? Not so much the former though huh?
| Why do you think that is?
|
| I'm not sure that it's easy; it depends on the context.
| As we know well, many racists use conceivably non-racist
| criticism to find ways to denigrate African-Americans, so
| it's important to be careful and sensitive to that.
|
| But the big difference is the vulnerability of the
| groups. If I post on HN 'software developers are morons'
| or 'SV billionaires are morons', it really doesn't
| matter. Devs and billionaires aren't in danger of losing
| their jobs, being subject to hatred, etc. But if I post
| that '(vulnerable minority) are morons', that's a very
| different matter - they are in danger.
| dcow wrote:
| > As we know well, many racists use conceivably non-
| racist criticism to find ways to denigrate African-
| Americans, so it's important to be careful and sensitive
| to that.
|
| This, of course, deeply depends on your definition of
| racist/racism. If I criticize some behavior that happens
| to be more prevalent among black americans than other
| americans, to some people that simple fact makes that
| critique, and thus me, a racist. That's the problem with
| the modern definition of racism. It's an ex-post-facto
| evaluation and it's way too easy to slap that on to
| pretty much whatever you want.
|
| > But if I post that '(vulnerable minority) are morons',
| that's a very different matter - they are in danger.
|
| No, they're not. I don't know a single reasonable human
| that would read that comment and go immediately _fire
| '(vulnerable minority)'_. Come on..
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > If I criticize some behavior that happens to be more
| prevalent among black americans than other americans, to
| some people that simple fact makes that critique, and
| thus me, a racist.
|
| You'll have to talk to those people, whoever they are.
| What I'm saying is that actual racist behavior often uses
| arguably non-racist arguments to attack African-
| Americans. It's an obvious and well-used tactic.
|
| > No, they're not.
|
| Hate speech spreads and promotes hate, of course, and
| that is dangerous to vulnerable minorities. And yes,
| people lose their jobs because they are minorities.
| dcow wrote:
| You think some boss reads a forum comment and then goes
| and fires their minority workers the next day because
| "hate speech"? I'd say that bigoted boss is the problem.
| Seems like a stretch to me..
| tptacek wrote:
| Because Black communities aren't countries.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| OK, replace "countries" with "communities" - my point
| stands.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, it doesn't; if you replace countries with
| communities, the other statement becomes immediately and
| obviously problematic.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Really? Would you care to elaborate as to why? Why are
| larger groups (countries) criticizable and smaller groups
| are not?
| tptacek wrote:
| Maybe, if we keep parsing for the rest of the day, we can
| solve all of racism on a message board thread. But
| because it's unlikely to happen, and because this isn't
| the purpose of this thread, I decline to try.
| tptacek wrote:
| Here, it clearly denotes American Black culture.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm not sure "Netflix for Black People" _clearly_ denotes
| anything at all.
| tptacek wrote:
| You didn't have to guess; you could have just read the
| detailed post instead of jumping to comment after
| partially metabolizing the title.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'd say the very fact that you have to read into the
| detailed post to understand which "black" is indicated in
| the title supports my claim that the term is
| problematically overloaded.
| tptacek wrote:
| You are expected to read the posts on HN before
| commenting. It's one of the norms of the site. This isn't
| a newspaper article; it's a post they wrote specifically
| for us, in our norms. You should not feel good about
| trying to litigate this at their expense.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I did read the post. It doesn't however detract from my
| claim that the term is overloaded.
| tptacek wrote:
| We're here to talk about the startup they're launching,
| not about this. Again, I don't think you should feel good
| about trying to score points like this.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Yes indeed, and discussion of the _title_ of the startup,
| and how it fits into the wider social landscape is very
| much relevant here, don 't you think?
|
| Also if you are under the impression I'm writing to score
| some "points" I can assure you you're mistaken.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > you're problematically lumping all sorts of people who
| happen to have dark skin into a single category
|
| United States society has been problematically lumping
| people together based on skin tone for over 400 years;
| the GP didn't invent it today on HN. It's already been
| done and well-ingrained. If your skin is black, many
| people will treat you differently, to the extent that you
| may be subject to violence, many won't hire you, loans
| are more difficult to obtain, you'll experience
| stereotypes and racism regularly. In the end, rather than
| deal with danger and abuse every day, you end up living
| in the same neighborhoods, socializing with the same
| people, going to the same schools and restaurants,
| visiting the same websites ... to make your daily life
| peaceful and safe. As I mentioned in another thread, you
| can't even watch porn without encountering endless racist
| stereotypes.
|
| As a result, while you may not think so and there are
| always exceptions, Americans with black skin share a lot
| with each other.
|
| > slave-descended culture
|
| What evidence do you have that this defines a cultural
| group (whatever that is)?
|
| > We should be tolerant of criticism of this culture's
| ideology and practices.
|
| Few people share your distinctions, so it's impractical.
| More importantly, it's impossible to distinguish
| criticism that is racist from that which is not. It's
| obviously easy, and often done, to say things that are
| arguably non-racist but critical in order to encourage
| and spread racism.
|
| Also, criticizing groups seems inherently stereotypical.
| An at-will club, such as the Libertarian Party or local
| Linux User Group, is different. But being born in a
| neighborhood to a culture doesn't make you responsible or
| at fault for some stereotype which may have nothing to do
| with you (and usually are false and often racist anyway).
| Let's look at people as individuals, responsible for
| their own actions.
|
| Finally, there's a lot of effort to create space for
| criticizing black people. Why is that important? How
| about we focus on the overwhelming problem, racism?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _United States society has been problematically lumping
| people together based on skin tone_
|
| Wouldn't the best solution to this problem represent a
| rejection of such categorization? Wouldn't that
| necessarily exclude "X for Black People" in the same way
| it excludes "X for White People"? I'd like to live in a
| society where skin tone is no more important than hair
| color. Surely the best way to get there is to de-
| emphasize skin tone and therefore "blackness" and
| "whiteness"?
|
| > _What evidence do you have that this defines a cultural
| group (whatever that is)?_
|
| From tptacek in another post:
|
| _" Black culture ... was created artificially by
| kidnapping millions of people from the African content
| and stripping them of their cultures, family ties, and
| names, prompting those people to construct a new culture
| (while uniting them for another 100 years in the
| experience of apartheid and the civil rights movement).
| It's its own powerful, interesting thing."_
|
| I have a hard time disagreeing - it seems to be a
| distinct cultural group.
|
| > _Few people share your distinctions, so it 's
| impractical_
|
| I disagree. I would say many people are able to make the
| distinction, and the lack of appropriate terminology to
| discuss it is universally frustrating.
|
| > _More importantly, it 's impossible to distinguish
| criticism that is racist from that which is not._
|
| It's quite easy. If you criticize a practice of
| cannibalizing visitors then it's reasonably clear the
| culture/practices are at issue, not the inherent traits
| of the people, unless of course we can prove some genetic
| predisposition to cannibalism.
|
| > _arguably non-racist but critical in order to encourage
| and spread racism_
|
| Yes doublespeak is a thing, but that doesn't mean frank
| discussion should be off the table.
|
| > _But being born in a neighborhood to a culture doesn 't
| make you responsible_
|
| I would say that it exactly does. Who else can be
| responsible for a culture's practices than the people who
| maintain and perpetuate that culture?
|
| > _space for criticizing black people. Why is that
| important? How about we focus on the overwhelming
| problem, racism?_
|
| Because these are intrinsically related. As long as we
| can't disentangle the criticism and solutionizing of very
| real problems with black culture and ideology from racist
| bigotry against black people we'll never solve the
| problem. As long as black people are in a special class
| that's protected from serious criticism they can never be
| equal to the rest of us.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| >> United States society has been problematically lumping
| people together based on skin tone
|
| > Wouldn't the best solution to this problem represent a
| rejection of such categorization? Wouldn't that
| necessarily exclude "X for Black People" in the same way
| it excludes "X for White People"? I'd like to live in a
| society where skin tone is no more important than hair
| color. Surely the best way to get there is to de-
| emphasize skin tone and therefore "blackness" and
| "whiteness"?
|
| That would be ideal and I want to live in that world too.
| I also want to live in a world without war, but for now I
| support having a military because war is still a thing.
| Today, tomorrow, and likely for years to come, African-
| Americans do and will suffer from racism and are
| stereotyped into a class by much of society. Also, they
| should do whatever they want; who are you and I to tell
| them what to do? Why do they need your approval?
|
| > As long as black people are in a special class that's
| protected from serious criticism they can never be equal
| to the rest of us.
|
| That's not at all what puts African-Americans into a
| different class and makes them be seen as unequal by
| racists. The racists and systematic racism are the
| overwhelming cause; the discrimination and classes is
| already there; the question is, how do we provide
| 'liberty and justice for all' to the people in that
| class, as best we can, while it persists?
|
| >> More importantly, it's impossible to distinguish
| criticism that is racist from that which is not.
|
| > It's quite easy. If you criticize a practice of
| cannibalizing visitors then it's reasonably clear the
| culture/practices are at issue
|
| Again, it's not; you call it double-speak.
|
| >> But being born in a neighborhood to a culture doesn't
| make you responsible
|
| > I would say that it exactly does. Who else can be
| responsible for a culture's practices than the people who
| maintain and perpetuate that culture?
|
| How do you know if that individual 'maintains and
| perpetuates' the culture - culture being an undefinable,
| changing thing, defined by you? And if they do, what
| about you and I therefore maintaining and perpetuating
| widespread racism, which is common among white people,
| and which is probably the worst evil of American history?
|
| Why is it so important to you to criticize other people's
| business? How about we focus on our own 'culture',
| conduct and its consequences?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _Why do they need your approval?_
|
| They clearly don't. I'm just pointing out that "X for
| Black People" seems to perpetuate and deepen racial
| tension and division, rather than helping alleviate them.
| It's moving the needle in the wrong direction, much like
| a nuclear arms race would.
|
| > _The racists and systematic racism are the overwhelming
| cause_
|
| This is not at all clear, and is hideously complicated
| (see below). To what degree are cultural practices
| prevalent in (some) black neighborhoods responsible for
| outcomes?
|
| [1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empiric
| al_anal...
|
| [2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf
|
| [3]
| https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/32/15877.full.pdf
|
| > _Again, it 's not; you call it double-speak._
|
| Yes but as I said, its existence shouldn't take frank
| discussion of the table.
|
| > _How do you know if that individual 'maintains and
| perpetuates' the culture_
|
| I'm no cultural anthropologist, but if an individual
| engages in a cultural practice that they learned from the
| cultural group they are a member of, then they can be
| seen to be perpetuating that practice.
|
| > _And if they do, what about you and I therefore
| maintaining and perpetuating widespread racism, which is
| common among white people_
|
| It's quite simple: I don't engage in the practice of
| racial discrimination or bigotry, in spite of the fact
| that it was a common practice among my family and
| community. I have therefore identified a cultural
| practice which I consider wrong (or just plain dumb), and
| consciously chosen not to engage in the practice and not
| perpetuate it. I am thus an active participant in the
| evolution and stewardship of my culture. I expect the
| same from everyone else.
|
| > _Why is it so important to you to criticize other
| people 's business? How about we focus on our own conduct
| and its consequences?_
|
| These are not mutually exclusive. I'm not aware of any
| issues with my conduct. However given this topic's
| overall popularity, polarization and the aforementioned
| problematically overloaded terminology, I find it
| extremely beneficial that these conversations be had in
| whatever forums can support them. To me, this is what
| depolarization looks like.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| >> The racists and systematic racism are the overwhelming
| cause
|
| > This is not at all clear
|
| This crosses the line into absurdity. Have a great day!
| thegrimmest wrote:
| A bit strange you're not even willing to entertain other
| causes, or elaborate a even little as to _why_ this is
| absurd, no? This stuff isn 't exactly universally agreed
| on, academically speaking.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| It's not though is it? "black people" are not a cultural
| group are they?
| Koshkin wrote:
| They are; not one group but many (still distinct from "non-
| black").
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I don't think it's possible or reasonable, particularly
| in the US, to assume or associate cultural identity with
| physical traits.
| tptacek wrote:
| They very, very much are.
| adenozine wrote:
| American black sorta kinda is, and I think Americanized
| thought leaders on all this stuff are muddying the waters
| immensely.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > sorta kinda
|
| I think the muddying consists of the fact that conflating
| physical traits with cultural identity means that any
| criticism of the given culture can be and is frequently
| labeled as racism.
| disneygibson wrote:
| This is an easy fix. Make it "Netflix by Black People" or
| "Netflix by Black Creators."
|
| _by_ , not _for_
| kbenson wrote:
| I don't know. I think "by" implies creation/ownership of the
| company in that case, but the important part is what it
| provides, not who owns it. Just like the GP, does "Water by
| Black (Whatever)" really have a draw? Some people may want to
| support people they identify with, but I think most just want
| a good product, so the trick is making sure that product is
| easily identified for those that are interested in it.
|
| Maybe trying to call to associations with BET is enough, and
| something like Black Streaming Entertainment (BSE, to avoid
| possible problems with BES) would be enough? Although if it's
| free, to my eyes BlackStream seems like it would be ideal.
| disneygibson wrote:
| My point is more that _for_ somewhat implies exclusion,
| while _by_ doesn't.
|
| Restaurant for Italians. Suggests that non-Italians don't
| belong here.
|
| Restaurant by Italians. Suggests that Italians make the
| food here and that it's not for a particular group.
| kbenson wrote:
| > My point is more that for somewhat implies exclusion,
| while by doesn't.
|
| I'm not disagreeing with that specific point. Just making
| a corollary that by doesn't necessarily identify what it
| is in all contexts, as it's more ambiguous depending on
| where it's used. For a restaurant, it's fairly obvious
| because we have prior assumptions about the service. It
| it was laundry, the assumption might just be it was
| advertising itself as a black owned business. For a
| streaming service? Probably more on the side of how a
| restaurant is seen, but why even court that confusion?
| Most restaurants would avoid it as well, and call
| themselves Soul Food or some other moniker that clearly
| communicates _what it serves_ as opposed to _who runs
| it_.
|
| "Restaurant by Black People" might communicate something
| about the restaurant enough to most people, but it's also
| just a poor choice of description all around. Netflix by
| Black People is similarly a poor description, IMO.
| rory wrote:
| Maybe they could call it "For Us By Us"
| [deleted]
| roamerz wrote:
| Wow nice way to promote division BlackOakTV. It's nice to know
| skin color matters so much to your company. Me? I try to make
| things more about the person rather than their color.
| davidajackson wrote:
| Seems like there's a lot of controversy in the comments. But
| controversy aside:
|
| Did any of your investors ask you why Netflix can't just add a
| section like what you're doing? How do you respond to that from a
| business standpoint?
| hawkice wrote:
| I'm just here to say that more people should check out Living
| Single, which gets a mention here. Particularly if you liked
| friends, Living Single was the original. :)
| LordHumungous wrote:
| ITT: People who don't understand American history getting all mad
| about something that has existed forever (Black entertainment)
| because everything must be a culture war battle to them.
| ggggtez wrote:
| I don't really care about your personal experience. What does it
| cost? Didn't YC teach you anything
| dang wrote:
| Please don't be an asshole on HN. We ban that sort of account.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: we've had to ask you many times to stop breaking the HN
| guidelines. If you keep this up we're going to have to ban you,
| so please fix this.
| justs0m3guy wrote:
| I'm not black but I enjoyed those shows in the 90s too. They were
| inclusive. Your focus on race is exclusive. It's a "Black space"
| and I get the feeling I'm not welcome.
|
| Maybe you're just trying to target a niche, but I think you're
| limiting your potential market, and, frankly, helping to further
| divide our society on racial lines.
| justs0m3guy wrote:
| Why the down vote?
| justs0m3guy wrote:
| idiot
| sodafountan wrote:
| I wholeheartedly disagree, would you feel unwelcome at an Asian
| restaurant or a place that serves authentic Mexican food?
|
| Simply creating a space that caters to culture specific
| creativity is a good thing, and as others have pointed out its
| been done before with BET.
| luckylion wrote:
| If the Restaurant was called "Food For Mexicans", would you
| feel welcome if you weren't Mexican? I have doubts.
| lettergram wrote:
| Can we replace "black" with "straight white" here?
|
| Don't think that's okay?
|
| Netflix and HBO Max is filled with LGBTQ of all races already. To
| the point it breaks from immersion. What are you talking about
| being "under represented in Hollywood?" 13% of the us population
| are black Americans, it's at least that in shows (likely much
| higher).
|
| I'm sick of this racism. If I started a "Netflix for white
| people" I'd be banned everywhere.
| dwt204 wrote:
| A great discussion, now lets support this new enterprise.
| justshowpost wrote:
| Missed opportunity: Blackflix.
| graderjs wrote:
| Great idea, man. This is awesome! This is exactly what people
| should be doing--using tech to make the world better. Hope you
| can look back 10 years from now and think so many interesting
| black stories might not have got told except for BlackOak! I
| definitely think segmenting away from the dominant studio model
| is the only way to break the crazily unrepresentative nature of
| most of the (still admittedly great) stories in the popular
| culture. Hopefully looking back your move will be obviously a
| good idea, but one maybe no one was brave enough to do it before
| you came along. Wishing you the best of success to do this
| mission! :)
| gunshai wrote:
| I am generally curious, when does under represented move to
| represented or appropriately represented?
| [deleted]
| kizer wrote:
| I support all black endeavors; let us AMPLIFY OUR BLACK BROTHERS
| AND SISTERS. No sarcasm; I support you!
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Fresh Prince was my favorite TV show of its era, and I'm not
| black :) If you get a catalog of content of that calibre, I think
| you'll have a larger audience than just black people. Good luck
| to you!
| boba10 wrote:
| I'm not black. Go to hui.
| f6v wrote:
| "X for black people" sounds so bizarre to me(non-American). The
| cultural divide between the people must be insane.
| dharmab wrote:
| "for Black stories" would be a positive way to phrase this.
| ldargin wrote:
| Calling a it a "Netflix for Black People" works for a
| informal elevator spiel; it shows that they squarely target
| black American viewers. "Black stories" is used by Netflix
| and Hulu.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "X for black people" sounds so bizarre to me(non-American).
|
| "Black" in America is, confusingly to lots of people, the name
| of an ethnic/cultural group formed by centuries shared
| experience of kidnapping, deliberate eradication of prior
| cultural identities, deliberate ongoing disruption of the
| family unit, slavery (and after slavery _de jure_
| discrimination, and after that substantial ongoing public and
| private discrimination in fact) to which the racial group
| _also_ labelled "black" was subjected in America.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's not a "cultural divide", it's a "representation divide",
| and it goes _way_ beyond ethnicity and it 's also way beyond
| the US.
|
| Many institutions in the Western sphere either don't match the
| demographic/ethnic composition of the target market any more or
| never have. Parliaments, cabinets, newsdesks, movies, highest
| level management in big companies, even access to voting - all
| of this has been dominated by white, straight and often old
| men, with women, non-White people and LGBT not being
| represented at all.
|
| Over time, many of the discriminatory policies fell - but the
| reality was, until maybe a decade ago, _representation_ still
| lacked - and now, change is coming in ever faster and faster.
| You now have female-centered superhero movies, Black superhero
| movies, transgender people in parliaments, a Black US
| President... and the speed of that change was for many
| conservatives simply too high, so they framed the quest for
| equal representation across all parts of society as a "culture
| war" instead.
| runjake wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a cultural divide (despite what our media
| wants), I would call America more a collection of cultures and
| I love being exposed to multiple different cultures just
| outside my proverbial front door.
|
| That said, this is a great idea and I wish this company the
| best. I'd love to see something similar for the Hispanic
| community, as well.
| whymauri wrote:
| >I'd love to see something similar for the Hispanic
| community, as well.
|
| 24/7 Caso Cerrado, let's goooo
| hn8788 wrote:
| "Netflix for black people" implies that the color of
| someone's skin determines so much about their personality
| that they need their own separate streaming service to watch
| shows on. I don't see how this is any improvement over the
| existing streaming services that already include a ton of
| indie content from a lot of different cultures.
| werber wrote:
| They explictly say that they're trying to break out of
| homogenous black programming. Obviously being black doesn't
| correlate to a consistent personality, but it does in many
| ways lead to a shared experience that someone who is not
| black has not had.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| I can certainly see where saying "for black people" doesn't
| sit well with a lot of people. However, that's exactly who
| we're targeting with the content. That doesn't mean it has
| to be exclusive. Most of the lyrics in rap songs are
| generally by black people and intended for black audiences,
| but it doesn't mean other people don't love it, can't
| appreciate it, or shouldn't listen. It just means the
| artist wanted to reach a certain demographic, a demo that
| was also likely wanting to hear an artist that spoke to how
| they see and live in the world.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Most of the lyrics in rap songs are generally by black
| people and intended for black audiences, but it doesn't
| mean other people don't love it, can't appreciate it, or
| shouldn't listen.
|
| We tried "rap music for white people" and we decided we
| preferred the rap music for black people :D
| em-bee wrote:
| do you really mean rap for black people or rap from black
| people?
| nickdothutton wrote:
| So far as I can tell the whole "melting pot" experiment didn't
| really work, absent powerful enough unifying
| vision/motivation/ideals and the cultures were immiscible. So
| now they've gone the multicultural route. I'm interested to see
| where this ends up for the US.
| [deleted]
| aeoleonn wrote:
| yep, it's quite silly. many americans recognize how silly it
| is. it's the dualistic messaging of mutually exclusive A & B:
|
| A. We're all equal! B. We need something special, because we're
| different!
| unixhero wrote:
| The US must be sooooo ripped apart by now.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is the impression you get if you only experience life
| through media.
| krapp wrote:
| No, it's just mostly triggered white people concern trolling
| as usual.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Saddening that the top comment is a banner rally for
| questions that are posed naively whose direct answer can
| easily be gotten at by asking an actual Black person in
| real life instead of a niche space like this one. But
| that's not the point.
|
| You should see the diversity threads on this board. It's
| the same dog whistling every time, but here its about some
| made-up 'we're reverting back to segregation' argument but
| no one had a problem with Minari winning awards about the
| Korean-American experience. It's the same idea, simply
| expanded to an entire platform of such content.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Personally I've never, ever encountered someone who isn't
| in the privileged class having these concerns lol.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Where I work (US-company, but I work outside of US) it is
| similarly weird to me.
|
| We appear to have gone backwards in the past 5-10 years in my
| view - no longer can you just be "you", but now it feels like
| we have to be labelled, categorised, and segregated into
| different groups. We now have to make a big deal and a big
| song-and-dance to _highlight_ our differences and _define_ what
| our ethnic backgrounds are (apparently to "celebrate" it or
| whatever), despite there being various laws (at least in the
| UK) about this sort of thing being a protected characteristic
| that you simply cannot talk about during interviews - its
| weird.
|
| What if I don't fit into some neat pigeon hole on some
| spreadsheet? What if I don't _want_ to explain in detail my
| family tree and pointing out which ethnicity my ancestors were?
| This idea that people are 100% Ethnic-Category-A /Ethnic-
| Category-B/Ethnic-Category-C and fit neatly in those slots
| without any kind of overlap seems willfully ignorant at best,
| and subversive at worst.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We appear to have gone backwards in the past 5-10 years in
| my view - no longer can you just be "you", but now it feels
| like we have to be labelled, categorised, and segregated into
| different groups.
|
| I've been alive for almost half a century, and I notice no
| such change.
|
| I have noticed lots of people _feeling_ like there is a
| recent change when they realize the identities that arr
| important to many people outside their immediate bubble (or
| even inside, though those are often just silently assumed
| within in-group dialogue or by dominant groups), often in the
| late teens or 20s.
|
| > We now have to make a big deal and a big song-and-dance to
| highlight our differences and define what our ethnic
| backgrounds ar
|
| No, we don't. Some aspects of identity are important to some
| people. Why some people who notice that then suddenly also
| feel the fact that certain dimensions of identity are
| important to other people implies a general obligation, I
| don't know.
|
| People for whom Black is an important aspect of their
| identity don't, as a rule, think it is important for being
| White to be central to White people's identity. (And the same
| is true, _mutatis mutandis_ , with other dimensions of
| identity.)
|
| > What if I don't fit into some neat pigeon hole on some
| spreadsheet?
|
| Then...you are just like everyone else, in that regard.
|
| > This idea that people are 100% Ethnic-Category-A/Ethnic-
| Category-B/Ethnic-Category-C and fit neatly in those slots
| without any kind of overlap seems willfully ignorant at best,
| and subversive at worst.
|
| Sure. But many of the people to whom minority identities are
| most critically important and worthy of attention would be
| the first people to tell you that; in fact, they have a whole
| analytical framework around it (intersectionality.)
| dleslie wrote:
| > despite there being various laws (at least in the UK) about
| this sort of thing being a protected characteristic that you
| simply cannot talk about during interviews - its weird.
|
| Likewise here in BC.
|
| I believe it is illegal to discuss race, gender, pregnancy,
| family planning, and so on and so forth during the interview.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| You are describing Identity Politics. The harshest critics
| call it Neo-Marxism, because it ought to be well-meaning but
| might ultimatively be disastrous.
| Ninjinka wrote:
| You just gave the argument against critical race theory.
| samkelly wrote:
| Critical race theory is about learning what actually
| happened to different groups of people to create the
| society we live in right now, not about segregating them
| today. If you don't learn from history, you're doomed to
| repeat it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That argument _does_ have nothing at all to do with the
| content of critical race theory...which is pretty much
| exactly like most arguments I've seen "against" it
| recently. Probably has something to do with all the right-
| wing rage mongering about that term being attached to
| things that have nothing to do with CRT, and about keeping
| teaching it out of domains where no one is even interested
| in putting it.
| ahoka wrote:
| This is the harsh reality if identity politics.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics
|
| Very harmful.
| jpfed wrote:
| It is possible that American culture has already _been_
| divided more than most HN readers have been aware of.
|
| See Michael Harriot's "blackfamous" thread:
|
| https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/120569584639172198.
| ..
| dleslie wrote:
| That thread was interesting. It had me thinking about all
| the people that _I_ consider to be famous, but which I
| doubt most people would be able to recognize.
|
| I will admit, I did not know who Stacy Adams is. I wonder
| about the size of the portion of people who know who Stacy
| Adams is, or who Louis Vuitton is, that also know who
| Corrinne Yu is.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| There's a meme floating around that America is no longer the
| Great Melting Pot (where everyone assimilates to American
| culture), now we are the Great Salad Bowl (where everyone is
| their own unique and special thing)
|
| Personally, I don't really understand all this need for
| individual representation, but then neither do I really have
| to.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >What if I don't fit into some neat pigeon hole on some
| spreadsheet?
|
| See story on that from Les Earnest:
| https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/earth/mongrel.html
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| We've gone from "don't label me, I'm not a soup can" in the
| 90s to literal label worship nowadays.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We've gone from "don't label me, I'm not a soup can" in
| the 90s to literal label worship nowadays.
|
| No, we haven't. "Don't label me, I'm not a soup can" was a
| reaction by certain people against what they saw the
| current dominant culture to be at the time _in exactly the
| same way that pointing to that as an ideal today is_.
| Except that the latter adds in the construction of an
| idealized view of the recent past on top of it.
|
| EDIT: But, it is true that the 90s--basically the last
| period of sustained, strong, broad economic expansion
| (subsequent expansions have been much worse
| distributionally)--was also a local high point in
| subjective _perceived_ quality of race conditions, though
| not particularly in objective measures. People are a lot
| more prone to be concerned with fairness issues when their
| experience falls short of expectations than when they don
| 't.
| liotier wrote:
| I'm typical French and my daughters' mother is African... I
| had to explain to my daughters the whole concept of race
| categories and I struggled because it seemed ridiculous and
| aberrant to them - it is alien to their multicultural daily
| life. They would laugh at having to chose between being black
| or white. I don't understand how Americans tolerate being
| categorized this way. My category: "Other" - always.
| skyde wrote:
| Most people of dark skin color also don't try to isolate
| themself from the rest of the population. But USA is
| _special_ it is now trendy to try to tell other you are the
| biggest victim. And it's easier for the black community to
| win this battle and officially be the biggest victim. I
| watched "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" as a kid and
| absolutely loved it. But today's show about black African
| American try drill in people heads that black are different
| and always victim of racism. It might be true but it make
| the tv show extremely boring for everyone black and white.
| [deleted]
| Bellamy wrote:
| Brilliant! This made me happy. I also sometimes forget that
| there is actually this thing about whites versus blacks
| versus whatever colored people.
| EnlightenedBro wrote:
| Anyone who notices race is the racist in the room.
| meiraleal wrote:
| You get to understand when you see the divide of
| prosperity, government support, unequal laws, school
| access, etc in numbers.
| skyde wrote:
| which unequal law? Is will smith victim of a law that a
| white actor would not?
| api wrote:
| The effects of entrenched discrimination in the US fade
| quite a bit when you hit upper middle class or above.
| They don't vanish entirely, but you have a lot more of a
| cushion and generally can avoid the problem areas. You
| can also fight back legally if necessary.
| [deleted]
| menzoic wrote:
| There are plenty examples of unequal laws. Look up how
| Georgia is disenfranching the black vote with recent laws
| they passed after the last election. We also have unequal
| enforcement of the law and unequal punishments.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| There are no unequal laws.
|
| Now I concede there is grossly unequal _enforcement_ of
| laws. But the words on the page are just the words on the
| page. It 's the _people_ who enforce those laws in an
| inequitable fashion.
| menzoic wrote:
| Before it was illegal/unconstitional many unequal laws
| were passed. Now that there are explicit laws banning the
| practice, any newly passed unequal will not be explicit
| in its language otherwise it can easily be striken down
| and made unenforceable in court. This may be why you
| can't recognize modern unequal laws that do exist and
| likely will continue to be passed in the near future.
| leephillips wrote:
| Growing up in the US, I learned to exist happily within a
| small rational subculture embedded withing a larger culture
| that is simply insane. The superstitions around "race" are
| just one aspect of that insanity. There is also the crudest
| form of Christianity that has ever existed, a reification
| of "democracy" that is part of a national religion and
| conflates what is popular with what is right, the prejudice
| against being educated....it goes on, and I could go on,
| forever.
| warent wrote:
| The problem is that white Americans don't have the same
| American experience as black Americans, which is where the
| divide comes from and it creates another culture. It's been
| getting a lot better, but there are still two legal systems,
| two education systems, etc.
|
| My perspective as a white man is that when black people
| create something for themselves like this, it's reclaiming
| the power. Like how they use the N word with each other, or
| how Gay people use that word, it's a reclaiming. Taking the
| hurtful racist division and turning it into something
| empowering is the point.
|
| I have no idea if that works in the long term or not, but I
| always think about Morgan Freeman who said something like the
| only way we can solve racism is if we stop talking about it
| bxjaii wrote:
| This is 100% false. Cops brutalize anyone who slightly
| offends them. More black people are disaffected by this,
| but it happens to us all.
|
| I am white and was nearly killed by a black officer in
| South Florida. He piled drived me head first onto a
| concrete floor on video tape. Prior to that, he choked me
| and threatened to kill me.
|
| I was in Miami to attend the VMAs with a billionaire, yet
| they claimed I tried to fight them. Eventually all charges
| were dropped. The cop was actually working private security
| when this happened.
|
| It's just men, testosterone, and power emboldened by a
| badge. The cop -- Mr. Ritchie -- later won Detective of the
| Year, while his Sheriff went to federal prison. Reality is
| different than what you read in the papers.
| bubbleRefuge wrote:
| From south florida and yeah there are allot of aggressive
| cops. Some of whom I grew up with. They have to deal with
| very dangerous and aggressive criminals on a daily basis
| and put their lives on the line. Its a tough job and its
| a grind, but we need them to protect us from criminal
| psychopaths in the community. We need to fix the root
| causes of crime: educational inequality, broken families,
| lack of opportunity, and the crime/poverty cycle. When
| and if this happens, the policing problem will go in the
| opposite direction.
| JackFr wrote:
| > They have to deal with very dangerous and aggressive
| criminals on a daily basis and put their lives on the
| line. Its a tough job and its a grind, but we need them
| to protect us from criminal psychopaths in the community.
|
| That is nonsense.
|
| I love cops in general. I am a cop supporter. I have
| known excellent cops.
|
| But cops enjoy a great license in the performance of
| their duties. Because of that it's very important that we
| 1) hire cops of outstanding character, not just bullies
| who want a civil service pension, and 2) hold them to
| very high standards, a standard of behavior higher than
| you would an average citizen.
|
| If dealing with aggressive criminals turns you into one
| you simply don't have the strength of character to be a
| cop. And good cops who tolerate bad behavior in their
| peers are not good cops.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The problem is that white Americans don't have the same
| American experience as black Americans
|
| This implies that there is a "white experience" and a
| "black experience" which is simply false and subtly racist.
| This is kind of the point of the parent's post--we've gone
| from understanding that variance within a race far exceeds
| variance between races to a mistaken belief that different
| races have such different experiences that we basically
| can't understand each other, that we're practically
| different species. Consider the white translator who was
| forbidden to translate the work of a black poet, the
| eminently qualified white school board volunteer who was
| forbidden from working with students because he wouldn't
| "understand the experiences of nonwhite students", or the
| anti-standardized-testing folks who argue that blacks are
| innately unable to compete in standardized tests.
|
| On that latter point, there's a popular analogy[0]
| circulating over the last decade that implies that
| different races are like different species of animal--
| chimps, goldfish, elephants, penguins, etc--and
| standardized testing is like a tree-climbing test. To put a
| fine point on it, these folks are implying that blacks are
| innately inferior at standardized testing while whites (and
| presumably Asians) naturally excel.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/JamaalBowmanNY/status/137652006277
| 390336...
| aeoleonn wrote:
| Personally, I no longer attempt to try to understand
| left-ist talking points on race. It's typically an
| ignorant, naive, and irrational perspective. Hence it's a
| waste of time to try to understand.
|
| Simply too much mutually exclusive duality, such as "We
| are all equal. But my group specifically-- we're
| different and we need special things and special
| treatment!"
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If you feel that there are two education systems, eg one
| for Black people and one for White people, aren't you
| simply reinforcing that by having more segmented services?
|
| Separate but equal was a dismal failure in the US. I don't
| understand why it deserves a second attempt.
| Joeri wrote:
| There are apps that cater to comic book fans, are they
| promoting the comic nerd divide? What is wrong with a
| service that caters to a content niche? Separate but
| equal is only a bad thing when people cannot choose which
| of the two systems they select into. A black person can
| choose to get regular netflix instead of this niche
| service.
| [deleted]
| skyde wrote:
| it's bad because it create a bubble. It's like the
| instagram for republican (parler). It turned into a
| social network for dangerous extremist very fast and is
| one of the reason the capital got attacked
| [deleted]
| sangnoir wrote:
| I guess it's time to ban HN and force everyone onto
| reddit then, because HN is a bubble.
|
| I disagree with your implicit assumption that all bubbles
| are inherently negative.
| skyde wrote:
| While HN is a bubble it will not result in burning the
| country to the ground. The problem is when polarization
| create war between 2 camp.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Is this still about BlackOakTV?
|
| Regardless, who decides which category a site/app falls
| into? There are legal remedies that can fix literal "war
| between 2 camps", everything else is freedom of
| expression.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Was it really equal the last time around? As a thought
| experiment, which is better: amalgamated but unequal or
| voluntarily separate but truly equal?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Separate but equal was a dismal failure in the US.
|
| It was not a failure, it was an lie that succeeded quite
| well at exactly what it was supposed to do, and was
| struck down for exactly that reason.
|
| But there is a difference between _de jure_ segregation
| of public services to assure that one community is
| underserved and crafting of commercial services to the
| serve a distinct set of preferences associated with a
| particular demographic.
| tekromancr wrote:
| I think you may be horrified to learn that American
| schools are still segregated
|
| https://www.epi.org/publication/schools-are-still-
| segregated...
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > These data show that only about one in eight white
| students (12.9%) attends a school where a majority of
| students are black, Hispanic, Asian, or American Indian.
| (We refer to this group collectively as students of color
| hereafter.) In contrast, nearly seven in 10 black
| children (69.2%) attend such schools (see Figure A).
|
| That seems less like segregation and more of just
| statistics. If black students are a minority, then by
| definition they won't be a majority in a random
| subsample.
|
| > As shown in Figure B, black students are also in
| economically segregated schools. Less than one in three
| white students (31.3%) attend a high-poverty school,
| compared with more than seven in 10 black students
| (72.4%).
|
| That's probably the stronger argument in your link. That
| outcome isn't surprising given that most school funds
| come via property taxes - if most economically depressed
| areas are minority occupied due to lower costs, then
| those same schools would also be economically depressed.
| tekromancr wrote:
| Keep going! How did there come to be schools that were
| predominantly black? Why is school funding tied to
| property taxes? Why isn't there a level of mobility that
| would allow students to go to a more well funded school?
| Who made these policies and why?
| LordHumungous wrote:
| The reality is that most of the country remains extremely
| segregated.
| weimerica wrote:
| > The problem is that white Americans don't have the same
| American experience as black Americans, which is where the
| divide comes from and it creates another culture. It's been
| getting a lot better, but there are still two legal
| systems, two education systems, etc.
|
| It's really more about how much money you have in your
| pocket, what neighborhood you're in - but please continue
| driving a racial wedge to further divide the nation and
| distract from our broken system's root causes.
| menzoic wrote:
| If you want to focus on the root causes "money in your
| pocket" and neighborhood, look at the root cause for why
| there is a racial wealth gap and why neighborhoods have
| been historically segregated.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > It's really more about how much money you have in your
| pocket, what neighborhood you're in
|
| And the most important that you don't mention, the
| mobility. If there is no mobility and black people will
| be forever on the poor side, the elephant is still in the
| room.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Even wealthy black Americans get harassed by police more
| often than their equivalently wealthy white counterparts,
| sometimes simply for being in the neighborhood where they
| live.
| skyde wrote:
| I agree with morgan freeman this is also why I don't think
| making a black tv channel and black churches and black
| university help it actually make the problem worse because
| it increases divide.
|
| As someone that grew up extremely poor. I am not aware of
| the two education system other than the "historically black
| university".
|
| What do you call the "white education system"?
| menzoic wrote:
| > I don't think making a black tv channel and black
| churches and black university help it actually make the
| problem worse because it increases divide.
|
| You seem to not be informed that black people were
| expressly banned from many American universities as
| recently as the 1960s. Even after racial bans were made
| illegal racial discrimination was heavy, things don't
| change instantly just because a law is passed.
|
| The only reason black universities exist is because black
| people didn't have other options. Creating black
| univerisites couldn't possibly make the problem worse.
|
| The media is dominated by white writers and actors and as
| a result the large majority of content is based on white
| culture with storylines that appeal to white people.
| Black actors audition and black stories are pitched, but
| most don't get hired or funded. BlackOakTV is making a
| space for those who are rejected and can't get funding
| for stories appealing more to a black audience.
| mikevm wrote:
| The thing is that no one has the same experience as anyone
| else. Do all "white people" have the same life experience?
| That's just absurd.
|
| Ask yourself this, what makes Blacks in America different
| than Jews or Asians? Heck, the Jews are probably the
| minority who has suffered the most historically (and still
| does, btw!), and they managed to integrate quite well.
|
| What has the gov't done to help Jews or Asians advance that
| it hasn't done for Blacks? Nothing.
|
| I think it's time to look for other solutions, rather than
| keep blaming the amorphous "white man" for all problems.
| menzoic wrote:
| Freeman recanted that statement. You can't solve bad
| culture by not taking about it. It will just thrive.
| Imagine a corporation had a toxic culture. In what way
| could not talking about it ever fix the company culture?
| The toxic people would just thrive. Would sexism and sexual
| harrasment just end if we stopped talking about it? The
| only thing close to what he said that would make sense is
| if parents and media stopped teaching their kids racists
| ideals both consciously and subconsciously.
| sokoloff wrote:
| BET wasn't offensive me. Telemundo wasn't offensive to me.
| Nickelodeon wasn't offensive to me. Food Network wasn't
| offensive to me.
|
| Serving targeted programming to an identifiable minority
| audience seems like a perfectly reasonable business (and
| social) proposition.
|
| I don't know that "Netflix for Black People" will test well,
| but it seems perfectly fine to me. [white middle-aged male if
| context matters].
|
| Edit to add: It seems like Fubu* is another extraordinarily
| successful story that used a similar Black solidarity message
| and targeting to positive effect.
|
| * "For Us, By Us"
| knicholes wrote:
| It kind of assumes that all black people will like these
| kinds of shows, like Nickelodeon assumed that all kids would
| like their shows. In a world where diversity is so
| celebrated, I find it odd to try to show black people only
| other black people. Kids like kids shows because the content
| is more suited for kids. I know the original poster said they
| felt good seeing the shows with black people in the 90s, but
| can't those shows be found on other platforms?
|
| Maybe some black people like to see shows with diversity,
| too.
|
| In some other post someone was commenting how their wife, who
| is a director of advertising, got complaints for using a
| white female hand for an advertisement. I proposed using
| profile information to show people advertisements of people
| that matched themselves, but that was met with disdain in HN.
| It was argued that we need more diversity, not pigeonholes
| for people to be isolated in their subcultures.
|
| Honestly when I read the title, I immediately thought,
| "Drinking fountains for black people."
| elliekelly wrote:
| I'm a woman and I think most of the shows on WeTV are
| stupid but I'm not offended by someone trying to create a
| channel of content geared towards women. Lots of women _do_
| enjoy their programming, I just don 't happen to be one of
| them. I suspect there are a lot of men and NB people who
| happen to like WeTV, too. And even though they might not be
| the demographic the channel aims to please, they're more
| than welcome.
|
| This isn't the same as "drinking fountains for black
| people" because it's _targeted_ programming but it 's not
| exclusionary.
| dang wrote:
| > _Honestly when I read the title, I immediately thought,
| "Drinking fountains for black people."_
|
| Wow, that is egregious. We ban accounts that stoop to vile
| tropes like that. I doubt that you intended it that way but
| you did it anyhow--seriously not cool. If you want to keep
| commenting on HN, please don't do anything like that again.
|
| The gratifying thing is that the commenters who replied to
| you were so entirely decent. That's the sort of
| thoughtfulness that you ought to be practicing, even when
| you encounter something that rubs you the wrong way on the
| internet. Or rather, especially then.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jrm4 wrote:
| Horribly bad comparison, of course.
|
| "Drikning fountains for black people" existed because
| "Black people using white drinking fountains" was
| prohibited. It wasn't a _preference._
| sokoloff wrote:
| Nickelodeon's success isn't predicated on all kids liking
| that programming, just some substantial/critical mass of
| them. Same for the other examples, including BlackOakTV.
|
| Presumably black people who like to see shows with [non-
| black] diversity are already having their needs met.
| Addressing a market whose needs are not being met has
| business (and social) value.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Couldn't have said it any better!
| austincheney wrote:
| I think you are assuming an offense that isn't stated. More
| likely the prior comment reflected a curiosity around an
| experience not present in their own localized culture.
| yummybear wrote:
| Yet "nightclubs for white people" is incredibly offensive.
| h3daz wrote:
| My only problem with marketing "X for black people" is that
| marketing "X for white people" isn't socially acceptable.
| jandrese wrote:
| You say this like the Hallmark channel or Lifetime don't
| exist.
| ansible wrote:
| Certainly those channels have never been marketed as "a
| channel for white people" as an explicit statement. Just
| because they _are_ channels for white people and white
| American culture doesn 't change that.
| [deleted]
| h3daz wrote:
| I am not familiar with those channels since I'm not
| american, but I am fairly certain that they are not
| marketed as "for white people".
| ethbr0 wrote:
| They're well known for being the most reductive, base,
| inoffensive content possible.
|
| In the sense that shows and movies seem like the result
| of endless series of meetings, where anything that anyone
| might object to is censored and removed.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| They are not, but their programming makes it quite
| obvious who their target audience is. And I don't think
| this is a bad thing, at all. For example, Hallmark has a
| large number of programs where characters are very overt
| in talking about and praising their faith and religion,
| which is much less common on other networks.
|
| To echo what others have said, though, if you are not a
| member of a minority, it can be difficult to understand
| how affirming and wonderful it can feel to experience,
| just for a brief moment and even if by fantasy, to exist
| as if you were the majority. For example, I am gay, and
| here are some common thought processes that go through my
| head that are basically completely foreign to straight
| people:
|
| 1. When I walk down the street with my partner of 20
| years, deciding to hold hands is not something I can just
| do spontaneously. It is essentially a _political act_
| when I do it, and so my first thoughts always go to (a)
| am I safe and (b) do I feel like making a political
| statement right now.
|
| 2. When I travel, the first thing I think about is
| whether I am going to a place that is accepting of gays.
| I'm just too old to want to deal with anti-gay attitudes
| when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself on vacation.
|
| 3. When I introduce myself to new people, I do a mental
| calculation as to whether I feel like mentioning my
| partner and thus outing myself in that situation. Again,
| it's always a conscious calculation, where it almost
| never is for straight people.
|
| So the first time I visited the Castro (a well-known gay
| neighborhood in San Francisco), it was kind of magical to
| me, to just walk down the street and have people assume I
| was gay before assuming I was straight, and it was really
| the first time I could completely relax and feel like
| what it was like to be a member of the majority.
|
| So that's what things like BET, LogoTV, Telemundo, etc.
| are really about, it's about actually feeling like you
| are the focus of attention for a short time.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| What are you saying about non-white people who enjoy
| those channels?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That they're boring? (But then, that's true of white
| people who enjoy those channels too)
| jandrese wrote:
| That they are like white people listening to Hip Hop.
| You're allowed to like it, but you should never expect
| them to cater to your demographic.
| ldargin wrote:
| I'm sure non-black people are welcome to this too.
| hobs wrote:
| Because that's called society. If you make X for white
| people in the current context, it's basically Fox News.
| LordHumungous wrote:
| What sort of product do you have in mind that would be for
| white people?
| sangnoir wrote:
| I mean, there already are sunscreen products that don't
| look flattering on non-white skin. However, they aren't
| explicitly marketed as "for white people" - that's
| implicit
| ape4 wrote:
| Ouch "Uber for white people" certainly isn't (apartheid)
| poeron wrote:
| The reason for that, in the US at least, is that "for white
| people" is implied by default. Everything is always for
| white people. So when you go and spell it out explicitly,
| "X for white people" ends up having a connotation of "X for
| white people _only_. "
| bobmaxup wrote:
| Does "X for kids" imply only for kids?
| lasfter wrote:
| What poeron is getting at is there can be two meanings of
| "X for Y". While "X for kids" doesn't imply adults can't
| watch, "X for adults" implies kids can't watch.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| X for white people isn't implied by default. That's a
| hollow phrase chanted by black people that its implied by
| default.
| zentiggr wrote:
| Well, it's kind of the default majority, and with the
| history here in the US particularly, not only is it
| unnecessary to say, it almost automatically invokes the
| history of racism we're still dealing with. So yes, not
| acceptable given the loaded context.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Sure, I get the immediate reaction. But this all has to do
| with what "blackness" and "whiteness" means; "Whiteness"
| effectively means here, "most everybody who didn't have to
| be enslaved because of their skin color."
|
| No problem with e.g. "X for German-Americans" or the like,
| if the niche is there.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| That comes with the territory of being the dominant ethnic
| group in our society. Everything is essentialy for white
| people by default unless explicitly stated otherwise.
|
| Also, it's not like this blackoakTV doesn't allow white
| people to sign up. But I bet you won't, because you have no
| interest in black stories. Which in turn kind of proves why
| it should exist.
| toto444 wrote:
| What's a black story ?
| tptacek wrote:
| A story involving Black people centered on Black culture
| and/or Black experiences, the same way Moone Boy is an
| "Irish" story.
| [deleted]
| bobmaxup wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_cinema
| toto444 wrote:
| I guess what confuses me is that one says a film is
| French because it has been produced by a French producer
| for a French audience. French is both a culture and a
| location.
|
| Whereas in the case of Black products culture and
| location are not the distinct.
|
| Edit : what I am writing is really confusing and I should
| have stopped 2 seconds before commenting.
| em-bee wrote:
| how about changing the marketing from "netflix for a black
| audience" to "netfix about black people"
|
| that means, this channel intends to highlight stories from
| or about black people, but it doesn't suggest who should
| watch it.
|
| saying "it's for black people" is patronizing because it is
| claiming that it is not for me, whereas, if it is "about
| black people" then i feel welcome to watch it, because i
| happen to be interested in that.
| salamanderman wrote:
| Except that "for white people" is the default. The minority
| representation in media is still generally token at best.
| And, while it may seem like a double standard, when you say
| something implying that there should be a "x for white
| people" it sounds like you're saying you're already seeing
| too much minority representation in media for your comfort
| or sense of place in society. And if that's the case, know
| that that means you have some issues to work out on your
| own.
| pier25 wrote:
| So you'd say Netflix is mostly for white people?
|
| Asking seriously, I'm European.
| [deleted]
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _The minority representation in media is still
| generally token at best._
|
| Is this really true, today? I can definitely see that
| even 10 years ago, but just glancing through Netflix
| recommendations, I see characters from all over the
| place. I wonder if anyone has been able to quantify this
| progress.
|
| > _know that that means you have some issues to work out
| on your own._
|
| Wait, what?
| alexanderskates wrote:
| What does "X for white people" look like though? The only
| reason that "X for black people" exists is that black
| people are a minority group and aren't sufficiently catered
| to by X, which is already more or less "X for white people"
| by default, at least in the US and much of Europe. As such,
| any product that that markets itself explicitly to white
| people (again, only referencing the US and Europe here) is
| much more likely to have less socially acceptable intent
| behind it
|
| "X for white people" makes more sense in a population where
| caucasians are the minority, for instance in China.
| umvi wrote:
| > What does "X for white people" look like though?
|
| Totally hypothetical example... "NBA for white people" -
| basically majority-white professional basketball teams
| playing each other. I'm sure that would ignite a
| firestorm if someone tried to do that.
| afavour wrote:
| But what would the justification be for setting up such a
| league? "Netflix for black people" is a representation of
| cultural differences and seeing those differences
| reflected on screen. "NBA for white people" would just
| be... excluding non-white people. White and black
| basketball players aren't different physically (on
| average) nor do they typically have different playing
| styles. There isn't really a lot of justification in such
| a division, hence why it would result in a firestorm.
| runbathtime wrote:
| You deny reality --"White and black basketball players
| aren't different physically" seriously? The only reason
| blacks dominate bball is bc they are different
| physically. The same for why we have women's sports that
| exclude men. The reason why blacks need to create X for
| blacks is often because they can't compete without it,
| which just means yes groups on avg are different. Whites
| can't compete with black bball players. Groups on average
| are different. So yes, I can see why there is a reason
| and market for a NBA for whites.
| umvi wrote:
| Fair point. How about "Rap for white people" - a record
| label that only features white rappers for people that
| want to hear more suburban white-America culture
| expressed through rap? Still might ignite a firestorm,
| all it takes is one media outlet framing it as racist.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| It might ignite a firestorm but this might too on more
| right wing channels (e.g. Breitbart), it's just that
| those channels aren't as represented in "mainstream"
| media
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Okay then take every black person and show off off so
| called "white-centric" network. Because the difference is
| BET is allowed to segregate but other networks can't all
| while the woke left does mental gymnastics to say that
| isn't racist
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cblackthornekc wrote:
| If you are generally curious about why this is something that
| is required, I suggest "Trigger Warning with Killer Mike" on
| Netflix. Specifically the first episode which deals with Mike
| trying to get to a concert only using black products and
| services.
|
| Long story short: The average lifespan of the dollar is
| approximately 28 days in Asian communities, 19 days in Jewish
| communities, 17 days in white communities -- and just six hours
| in Black communities. Meaning after that time, that dollar has
| to go into another community for a product or service.
| BtM909 wrote:
| thanks for the suggestion. Will watch!
| afavour wrote:
| I don't know what country you're from but if you don't think
| there are subcultures in your country under-represented by the
| dominant media I'd assert you're almost definitely wrong.
| Perhaps it feels a little strange from the outside that such a
| subculture is definitively "black" but yeah, that's basically
| how things are in the US. The country has a deep history of
| racism and black people being literal slaves, in that context
| it isn't surprising that a distinct culture developed.
|
| But I don't think the divide is anywhere near as insane as
| you're imagining. People don't just belong to one culture and
| ignore any external infulence. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian,
| etc. people all watch the NBA, NFL, watch Marvel superhero
| movies, so on and so forth. It's just that everyone also has
| additional niches.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Nah, in the US is pretty bad, I have lived in Europe for a
| long time, and in Asia for a few years, we, here in the US
| make sure you understand your place, as a x (black, latino,
| asian, white, .....) Everything you do, from applying for a
| job , to getting your kids in school, requires you to write
| your race in a piece of paper. You get all the time , this
| product X for that race, that other thing Z for this other
| race, etc... Is like you are not Juan, you are the Mexican
| guy that lives here. And obviously you get labeled with all
| the stereotypes as well. If you are white(or any other race),
| and you feel sorry for other races, maybe just leaving them
| alone is a start, and stop classifying us like dog breeds.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| > I don't know what country you're from but if you don't
| think there are subcultures in your country under-represented
| by the dominant media I'd assert you're almost definitely
| wrong
|
| What constitutes under-repressented? Is proportionally
| represented ok?
|
| I mean, I'm one of those "subcultures" and honestly I don't
| feel the need to be represented in media. I'm ok with it, but
| I don't see what does it bring to me or to my "subculture".
| We need investment in infraestructure and political-
| institutional changes.
|
| I understand it's your country, so your own to decide but I
| agree with the other user, I really can't understand why so
| much focus with media representation in the US.
|
| It feels weird, and honestly the logic behind it comes as
| very superficial and light-minded.
| nindalf wrote:
| Almost all the movies and TV shows and video games I've
| consumed featured no one who looked like me. But I still
| felt _represented_ when a character behaved like I did or
| was interested in the same things I was - characteristics
| that formed a bigger part of my identity than my skin
| colour. I'd speculate you might be the same - you're
| listening to stories that feature people who display
| characteristics similar to yours.
|
| But here's the thing you're missing - _if_ your race is a
| dominant part of your identity, like it is for many black
| people in America, it's certainly normal to look for
| stories that feature black people and black stories.
| Stories where the characters experience problems and issues
| similar to the ones they might face in their lives.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| > But here's the thing you're missing - if your race is a
| dominant part of your identity, like it is for many black
| people in America, it's certainly normal to look for
| stories that feature black people and black stories.
| Stories where the characters experience problems and
| issues similar to the ones they might face in their
| lives.
|
| Yeah, maybe, I can perhaps agree with that, but I still
| fail to see the political proposition.
|
| Maybe I should live in the US to understand it, but
| honestly when I read about black-americans It seems many
| of their pressing issues are material ones, and the ones
| that aren't are probably very related to material ones
| and I fail to see how a netflix for black people is going
| to change any of that, except reinforce an ingroup-
| outgroup dynamic.
| nindalf wrote:
| It doesn't really answer this question, but the show
| #blackAF on Netflix helped me learn a bit more about
| black people in America. For example, fatherhood is
| challenging for everyone, but the expectations on black
| fathers is a bit different. This show portrayed those
| challenges well.
|
| There most certainly is an ingroup-outgroup dynamic, but
| I don't think a Black Netflix intensifies it, it merely
| caters to that audience, just like Netflix is doing with
| #blackAF or DisneyPlus is doing with blackish.
| [deleted]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > What constitutes under-repressented? Is proportionally
| represented ok?
|
| Reminds me of an article a while back complaining that
| Muslim characters were underrepresented in film despite
| being 2X proportion, meanwhile Christian characters in film
| are rarely represented (and secular characters wildly over-
| represented). When identifiably Muslim and Christian
| characters are portrayed in film, they are frequently
| villains (Muslims being terrorists and Christians being
| bigots, typically) and when they aren't villains they are
| fundamentally secular but maybe they wear a cross necklace
| or feature prominently in a corny Christmas special (e.g.,
| Turk from Scrubs). Anyway, this is all a tangent, sorry for
| the digression, etc.
| jhcxdfb wrote:
| Well, some Americans, like myself, have hoped that the
| vision of the melting pot would come to pass instead of
| this new segregation movement. But it seems that the Woke
| movement wants us to resegregate: don't share culture,
| that's cultural appropriation. Don't move to an area that
| isn't your racial makeup, that's gentrification.
|
| Don't hire people who are white, if you can help it. That's
| inclusion.
|
| Create institutions, like TV channels, only for specific
| races. That's diversity.
|
| Pass lots of "stimulus" bills to trigger inflation through
| printing money, causing everyone from the middle to the
| bottom to get poorer, but the same amount of poor by the
| end of it. That's equity.
| jb775 wrote:
| The WOKE crowd is literally making everything worse in
| America. They act like they care about certain
| subcultures, but gentrify those subcultures out of their
| own lives and indirectly take advantage of them. They
| probably represent less than 5% of Americans, but no one
| wants to deal with the downside of telling them to shut
| the hell up and that they're fake people.
|
| "Bobo's in Paradise" and "Revolt of the Elites and the
| Betrayal of Democracy are good books to explain what's
| really going on.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I'm part of a subculture and every instance of
| "representation" that MSM throws our way is radically off,
| horrible in every way. I'm not looking for more of that.
|
| If I was in a more predominant subculture, maybe I'd be
| interested in accurate representation, but expecting a lot
| of that from entertainment doesn't seem wise.
|
| Accepting entertainment for what it is, and not necessarily
| representation, feels like a more manageable remove.
| bgroat wrote:
| I used to believe that media representation didn't matter.
| After all, fictional characters are fiction, why should I
| expect them to look like me?
|
| Then someone pointed out to me that my favourite super-hero
| was Spider-Man because Peter Parker is a 20-something loser,
| just like me.
| bxjaii wrote:
| 90% of American men feel like losers. Nothing special about
| that. Life is boring and hard.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yeah people used to say video games and violence on TV had
| no effect on people -that is was just made up worlds and
| allowed people to role play, etc... now they are admitting
| there is influence and it does affect people...
| aerovistae wrote:
| And as time has passed they've found more and more that
| they were wrong -- where on earth is this comment coming
| from. Seen so many sources contradicting this over the
| years.
| upgrejd wrote:
| How does it influence real life?
| jonhohle wrote:
| As a teen in the early 90s, I distinctly remember
| significant campaigns against violence represented in TV,
| movies, video games, and music. There were several
| congressional hearings demonizing Mortal Kombat, rap
| music, Doom, etc.
|
| Now as a parent with a tween and younger kids, my
| understanding of the current state of the science is that
| there still is no overwhelming consensus on increased
| violence related to media, however it seems to be agreed
| that aggression is linked. 30 years later Mortal Kombat
| is the number one fighting game franchise of all time,
| and murder rates are lower and violent crime are
| relatively unchanged.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > 30 years later Mortal Kombat is the number one fighting
| game franchise of all time
|
| Smash Bros and Street Fighter are probably more popular
| actually.
|
| Mortal Kombat really, really sucked between 3 and 7. MK
| started to get good again around 8, but really it was
| "Injustice" (which used Mortal Kombat's engine) that made
| people start taking MK seriously again.
|
| MK9 is a modern, competitive fighter. But its not as well
| respected as other games: Street Fighter, Tekken, Smash
| Bros even. Japan has a real arcade scene (or at least, it
| did before COVID19 struck), so the games that have proven
| themselves in the public arcades are more fundamentally
| competitive than American games like MK9 or Killer
| Instinct.
|
| I dunno how Smash Bros became so popular though.
|
| ----------
|
| Honestly, the extreme violence of Mortal Kombat is a big
| turnoff to the competitive crowd IMO (much like the
| extreme "sexiness" of Dead or Alive is also a turnoff).
| Its good for carving out a niche, but... I don't think
| people actually like seeing the characters they attach
| themselves to die.
|
| -----------
|
| There was a study I saw: its not that violent video games
| cause violence. Its that violent individuals choose
| violent video games.
|
| In a mainstream setting, you'll just gross people out
| with a lot of the Mortal Kombat stuff. I think kids like
| it (because they like seeing their parents get grossed
| out). Otherwise, when adults get together to play
| fighting games... "Injustice" seems to be more popular
| than Mortal Kombat, despite Mortal Kombat being the
| mainline game and Injustice the DC-superhero "skin".
|
| ---------
|
| Now that I'm an adult, here's my viewpoint on the whole
| thing. Children like breaking taboos. Adults don't like
| it when Children break taboos (children should listen to
| Adults). I feel like Adults sometimes make up stories for
| why children should listen to them, but this only
| encourages more taboo-breaking behavior from kids. That's
| why Mortal Kombat is such a draw for me when I was
| younger (I knew my parents didn't like it, but that was
| part of the charm).
|
| Similarly, I see my sister freak out about her daughter
| playing Mortal Kombat (despite me and my sister playing
| MK back when we were her age) and turn off the game. My
| sister claims that the improved graphics make it
| different... but my eyes see the same thing. Her daughter
| likes breaking taboos and sometimes not listening to her
| mom, and playing MK is an avenue to do so.
| samkelly wrote:
| > I dunno how Smash Bros became so popular though.
|
| It's accessible (no crazy button combos), fun (at a party
| or whatever), and not really "violent" in the same way
| that Mortal Kombat is bloody as hell. Cartoon violence,
| not realistic simulated violence. I think that's a major
| driver.
| dragontamer wrote:
| When you really think about it though, Smash Bros history
| is just filled with anti-competitive changes.
|
| > It's accessible (no crazy button combos)
|
| Melee is not. You need to consistently wavedash into
| double-shine combos while foxtrotting to remain
| competitive. Every landing must be L-canceled (especially
| during combos). Its a horribly inaccessible game, and was
| all we had for many years.
|
| Following Melee was Brawl: where "tripping" was invented
| to randomize the game and piss off competitive players.
| The most popular "Brawl" was the version people
| __hacked__ to rebalance the game (taking advantage of the
| Epona glitch from Twilight Princess to install the
| Homebrew channel: you can remove tripping and arbitrarily
| rebalance the Brawl game entirely). It wasn't until
| Smash4 (WiiU, 2014) that players got an actually
| competitive game.
|
| Smash Ultimate is finally a very, very good game. But it
| makes no sense to me why the Smash community stuck with
| it through the Melee and Brawl years.
|
| > Cartoon violence, not realistic simulated violence. I
| think that's a major driver.
|
| I think that's a good point. The Smash series (and Marvel
| vs Capcom series) was timid on violence and sexiness...
| focusing mostly at the "cartoon" level that was
| mainstream and acceptable.
|
| The other fighting games leaned into violence (Mortal
| Kombat) and/or sexiness (Soul Calibur's Ivy, Street
| Fighter's Cammy, KOF Mai) to try to get some appeal, but
| I think that lowered the chances of the wide mainstream
| acceptance.
|
| Smash was always a "Kids" game, and therefore safe for
| kids to play. No reasonable adult would turn off the game
| or otherwise be worried that their kids were playing that
| game. Marvel vs Capcom was at a similar level.
| [deleted]
| dragontamer wrote:
| Miles Morales is one of the most successful new Marvel
| characters too.
|
| But there's something authentic about Miles when other
| characters feel like pandering.
|
| ----
|
| Nick Fury Junior is technically a newer character. (The
| original Nick Fury Senior is white). They just handwaved
| the difference by sticking a junior in the name without
| elaboration though.
|
| ------
|
| Black Panther from the 70s is definitely pandering lol. But
| the writers were good at it. (Blatant pandering isn't
| necessarily a bad thing in the right context)
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| You wrote: <<<I don't know what country you're from but if
| you don't think there are subcultures in your country under-
| represented by the dominant media I'd assert you're almost
| definitely wrong.>>>
|
| Agree. I could imagine Netflix-for-Turks streaming in Europe
| for overseas Turks!
| jandrese wrote:
| Or a Netflix for Gypsys. I've always found it amazing how
| many Europeans will berate Americans for their
| discrimination and then turn around and talk about how to
| best get rid of Gypsys that show up.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I heard it is better to say Roma people now, instead of
| Gypsys. What do you think? (My old co-worker was from
| Romania and explained it to me. And I have see positive
| propaganda adverts in Italy explaining the same.)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Or literally sterilize them.
| anthk wrote:
| So just like the US against Latin people until _very_
| recently. Or Canada. But not under a fascism regime like
| Franco, but under a self-called democracy, which is far
| worse.
| playcache wrote:
| Everyone feels for the plight of the Gypsies, right up
| until they move caravans onto the park behind your house.
| anthk wrote:
| Or Gypsy women themselves fed up of their own backwards
| machoist culture.
|
| Most well educated gypsies are being frowned down by
| their own relatives as if they became "non-Gypsy
| traitors" and they often run away from their own ghettos
| to never, ever come back.
|
| That never happened in the US with Black people, even in
| the worst racist laws in the 50's. They even tried to
| live with the same rights as the White people.
|
| Gypsy people in Europe, at least the tribalistic ones
| want to _secede_ from the society, as a reverse MLK and
| live by their _own_ rules, having those priority over
| state laws.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I suspect you were aiming for sarcasm, but such a service
| would succeed in Germany, for sure.
| luckylion wrote:
| Turks in Europe tend to watch Turkish TV and prefer Turkish
| language, so there's not really a market for Netflix-But-
| Every-Actor-Is-Turkish in $europeanLanguage.
| f6v wrote:
| I haven't lived in a society with such a tragic racial
| history as in US. So my intuition tells me socioeconomic
| class is more relevant than the race. If I'm a white UPS
| driver, I have more in common with a black DHL driver than
| with a white physician. Like, working people go to the same
| restaurants, shops and have the same struggles overall. But
| then again, I've seen all the news about the BLM protests and
| I realize I know nothing about how society is structured in
| the US.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I don 't know what country you're from but if you don't
| think there are subcultures in your country under-
| represented_
|
| Where do you draw the line in your definition of
| "subcultures"? Is it Black/White/Brown? I always feel weird
| that I'm pigeon-holed into "white", as if I have anything in
| common with those of Italian or Jewish ancestry.
|
| > _The country has a deep history of racism and black people
| being literal slaves_
|
| The USA is astoundingly multi-cultural. Why do you think so
| many people from around the globe try to get there?
| bxjaii wrote:
| That's because Hollywood and American corporations are a
| systemically corrupt system.
|
| Why not just create a hip / fresh / cool network? Identifying
| it with race is a violation of societal primitives.
|
| I like "black content" even though many black creators are
| not 100% black. A lot of white people have direct African
| heritage.
|
| And of course, EVERYONE's grandparents are ultimately from
| Ethiopia. My ancestors left Northern Africa before a black
| person's did, thus I'm different than them?!
|
| And the world is deeply racist. Mexico is ran by all light
| skinned people with Spanish heritage. Russia, Japan and all
| of the Middle East is way more racist than the US. Very dark
| skinned people are discriminated all over the world including
| in the US by black communities.
|
| Sam Harris had a great podcast on how race is a myth-
|
| https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/182-unlearning-race
| [deleted]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It depends on where parent is from. There are a lot of
| relatively monolithic countries from an ethnic perspective.
|
| To the broader point, I think what Uzo is talking about is
| "representation."
|
| Which doesn't just mean "some type of person on the screen."
| It means the full diversity of experiences and aspirations of
| that type of person... on the screen.
|
| _Living Single_ isn 't _Friends_ with African Americans.
|
| It's African Americans put in the situation of _Friends_ ,
| and then living their own similar-but-unique story in that
| situation, informed by cultural differences. (IMHO, it's also
| a helluva lot better of a show)
|
| The 90s had a lot of shows about middle class, successful
| African American families.
|
| That kind of... stopped. Once TV got homogenized and
| distributors realized that African American viewers would
| watch shows about white people, but white people weren't as
| happy watching shows about African Americans.
|
| And the lack of aspirational and affirmational media that
| speaks to every person is absolutely a problem.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| For what it's worth, the "homogenized" also means that the
| "white people TV shows" don't represent white people but
| rather a sort of lowest-common-denominator that can appeal
| broadly but not accurately represent anyone including white
| folks (except perhaps some SoCal types). They happened to
| feature white actors/actresses, but recent efforts to
| diversify casts haven't manifested in an improvement in
| quality.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| I couldn't agree more! You want to do PR for us?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Not sure I'm a good fit, but if you want a younger voice
| I've got a precocious 13 year old daughter... ;)
|
| Eth bro dot co at gmail
| brodouevencode wrote:
| > It's African Americans put in the situation of Friends,
| and then living their own similar-but-unique story in that
| situation, informed by cultural differences. (IMHO, it's
| also a helluva lot better of a show)
|
| Living Single was a good show because, unlike Friends, it
| was actually funny.
|
| > That kind of... stopped. Once TV got homogenized and
| distributors realized that African American viewers would
| watch shows about white people, but white people weren't as
| happy watching shows about African Americans.
|
| But let's be nuanced about this - I don't think that skin
| color is the real case. Everyone watched Cosby (and for the
| sake of discussion let's ignore the current situation with
| him). My (white) heavily bigoted/borderline racist
| grandmother watched Cosby. He was America's dad and loved
| by everyone. I think the real problem was that black
| characters weren't put into shows that represented widely
| popular, aspirational American ideals or lifestyles, which
| Cosby had (nuclear family with professional parents and
| kids dealing with kid stuff). If you want to say that
| really doesn't represent the majority of the black American
| experience you wouldn't be wrong, but it also doesn't
| represent the majority of the white/Hispanic/Asian American
| experience either. It was something to aspire to.
|
| Those sorts of mass-appeal western values-type shows, IMHO,
| will be some of the best bridges to build in regards to
| race relations.
| tptacek wrote:
| Building bridges between communities is good, but it
| isn't the singular goal of storytelling. There are plenty
| of stories to tell that aren't wrapped tightly around the
| mission of making Black people seem cheerful and
| unthreatening to America, just like there are plenty of
| stories to tell about about Irish people that are about
| the complexity of Irish people just as human beings with
| human stories that happen to feature distinctive aspects
| of Irish culture.
|
| I'll watch a movie set in Scotland just because I think
| Scottish culture is super interesting, regardless of
| whether that movie aims to make Scotland seem charming or
| "well integrated" with my own culture.
|
| But the thing is, nobody (at least in America) expects a
| show about Scottish people to shoulder the burden of
| holding up a bridge between Scotland and the world. But
| there _is_ a sense (at least in America) that the
| cultural success of Black stories is to be benchmarked
| against the Cosby Show. Which is weird, when you think
| about it.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| > the mission of making Black people seem cheerful and
| unthreatening to America
|
| Implies that America thinks this way. Again, nuance is
| needed.
| jessaustin wrote:
| The explosion of (largely greenbean, but to your credit
| yours isn't) concern trolling on this thread certainly
| supports the implication. On HN one might have expected
| more discussion of business models, technology, etc.
| Instead we have wall-to-wall "don't you know it's racist
| not to pretend that race has never been a thing in USA?"
| brodouevencode wrote:
| It takes significant historical events to shed the
| consequences of past significant historical events. The
| past is exactly that but that doesn't mean we can escape
| it. People with half a brain know and understand this but
| (if I'm understanding you right) there's also a lot of
| using it as a club in these types of discussions. We'll
| never get away from that without some significant shift
| in the collective frames of reference. My comment was
| more a challenge on the wording used in
|
| > the mission of making Black people seem cheerful and
| unthreatening to America
|
| _seem cheerful and unthreatening_ is in particular what I
| take umbrage with. That implies that America finds black
| folks threatening which is why there better be some deep
| clarification in that statement. But on it's face who
| really thinks this way? Only ignorant people and true
| racists have this perception. As far as I can tell that
| percentage is low.
|
| As far as the business goes I think there's more
| opportunity in casting that wider net like Cosby or more
| recently The Neighborhood and creating more appeal for a
| larger audience. The model of "Netflix for black people"
| immediately excludes about 86% of the population. Some
| non-black folks will subscribe, and giving a very liberal
| 16% of that share they are still excluding 70% of the
| potential population. This doesn't mean that they won't
| be successful though - Tyler Perry basically does the
| same thing (though not overtly so) and he does pretty
| well for himself. If I were an investor I'd have to
| examine this under a microscope before jumping into any
| investments. But who knows? Hopefully they will do well.
| tptacek wrote:
| The apparently simplicity of marketing new Cosby Shows in
| the mass media is the whole premise of this startup; it's
| "Netflix for Black people" because the bet is that Black
| people will appreciate a space in the media where they
| can simply tell stories centered in Black culture which
| aren't freighted with the need to bridge cultural
| divides. There is a time and a place for bridges and also
| for enclosures.
|
| You are certainly welcome to subscribe no matter who you
| are, and you might well do that if you're interested in
| stories told in a Black context --- for the same reason
| you might have been super interested in watching Babylon
| Berlin even if you don't even speak German. Or you might
| not. That's one of the cool things about pluralism.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| I don't disagree with this. But as I said they've
| alienated a very, very large pool of potential customers.
| Good luck to them, but they could have gone bigger.
|
| EDIT: short of a Tyler Perry or Oprah Winfrey jumping on
| board (someone that has significant momentum), the only
| other way this survives is with an acquisition. Netflix
| would be primed to pick this up as the start of a black-
| interest channel within Netflix itself. If this is a real
| market Netflix will either buy them or start their own.
|
| And just a note here - I care nothing about the racial
| aspects of it but do like it when companies and people
| win and thrive. I want to see that here too but I think
| they're lopping off too many potential customers.
| tptacek wrote:
| If they succeed with their intended audience, it's not
| going to matter how their day-1 messaging touched jumpy
| message boards like us. The content will win or it won't.
| Looking all the comments on this thread, I think it'd
| probably be a pretty big mistake to try to make something
| that doesn't piss off some of these people, rather than
| --- as YC tells people to do --- making something that
| some specific people truly love.
| chrisofspades wrote:
| > Living Single isn't Friends with African Americans.
|
| Implies that _Living Single_ came after _Friends_ , but it
| debuted the year before.
| jessaustin wrote:
| In fact lots of people feel that _Friends_ was largely a
| ripoff of _Living Single_.
|
| https://www.theodysseyonline.com/white-ripoff
| bluedino wrote:
| There are black family TV shows like Blackish, but the
| current trend is to mix a black and white character (or
| family) and then do plots based on the zany differences
| between the two. Bob Loves Abishola, The Neighborhood, etc.
| It's cheap and low-quality tv.
| lallysingh wrote:
| It really is! I'm Asian and have bounced between a few
| communities over the years. The largest group can act as if the
| others aren't significant enough to bother with. The other
| groups constantly have to defend their differences from
| constant influence and comparison with the majority.
| chokeartist wrote:
| Thank the media. We weren't obsessed with race until recently.
| Also shoot every journalist.
| poisonarena wrote:
| I have been living bouncing back and forth between Brazil,
| Israel, and Colombia for the last several years. I use Tinder
| and Bumble a lot, and I notice in all these countries if you
| look at girls Instagram profiles(not all but many many), have
| their countries flag emoji in their profile, or maybe "100%
| Colombiana", or Israeli flag with hearts, etc etc. But when I
| visit America the girls display the flag that their like
| grandparents immigrated from and seemingly nobody wants to be
| "American" and it seems like a redneck or low class thing to
| put your american emoji in your profile. I have noticed this in
| larger American cities, it seems nobody wants to rep their
| flag, and it is a great contrast to other places I have been.
| Just an observation from a lurker
| dang wrote:
| These guys don't deserve to have their launch thread turned
| into the Nth copy, for extremely large N, of a same-old
| flamewar. That's what you started here, and it was entirely
| predictable from your comment, which means you broke the site
| guidelines. Please review them and stick to the rules. This
| kind of thing is nasty and avoidable.
|
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| f6v wrote:
| The guidelines are very far from being an exact science and
| your comment is too subjective.
|
| And even if I started it, it was up to dozens of others to
| not comment on my comment. Could have just downvoted it to
| oblivion.
| lettergram wrote:
| Yes the country has lost its mind. They're reconstituting
| segregation in the U.S. at the moment
| habeebtc wrote:
| Nah. This is no different than, say, CrunchyRoll or Viki.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It is a bit different, because I suspect ultimately, this
| is targeted at a much bigger market. I'm not sure the exact
| current population of Africa, but it's huge. And it's
| getting bigger rather than smaller.
|
| I could certainly be mistaken, but I'd bet my net worth
| that this is about making a product that will resonate with
| global black youth. From Canada to eswatini. From Addis to
| Trinidad and Tobago.
|
| And that market is enormous.
| raclage wrote:
| Can you give an example? I'm assuming you're not referring to
| this Netflix competitor as an example of something equivalent
| to making it illegal for non-whites to eat at certain
| restaurants.
| xdennis wrote:
| Subscribing to a service is not mandatory, so not
| comparable, but there are case of re-segregation in the US
| such as white-only race training sessions at work or the
| whole Evergreen hullabaloo.
| tag2103 wrote:
| Why does "Netflix for Black People" scarily remind me of
| "Water fountains for Black People". This is horrifying, OP
| please consider this in your approach.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| You're essentially saying that black people need to erase
| their cultural identity and assimilate into the dominant
| culture and shut up and watch tv shows about white people
| like the rest of us and be happy about it. Black people
| live a different experience than other groups, and maybe
| they want different shows that resonate with them. BET has
| been successful for a long time and this service is BET for
| the internet.
| flyingfoxxx wrote:
| What constitutes as the "black experience"? Are you
| speaking in terms of the _modern day_ experience of black
| people? This is a genuine question, and I would really
| appreciate to hear a response from one who is black.
| Also, is "black" a culture? No really, aren't there
| different cultures that make up the black population,
| just as there are for whites? Or is there also "white
| culture"? Or "brown culture"? These seem like dangerous
| over-generalizations that lack the nuance they deserve.
| cphoover wrote:
| A Nigerian, or Jamaican may have a completely different
| understanding of culture than black people whose family
| history ties back to US slavery.
|
| It is weird how we just tend to generalize over all of
| this because of the color of one's skin.
| [deleted]
| tssva wrote:
| "this service is BET for the internet."
|
| Wouldn't BET+ be BET for the internet?
| tcoff91 wrote:
| And this service is another competitor to it.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Black people live a different experience than other
| groups_
|
| Black people are certainly entitled to watch whatever
| content they choose, but they are not unique in their
| "different lived experiences". "White people" are not
| some amorphous, homogeneous group.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You are saying that as if all black people have the same
| identity or something. Since when does the color of ones
| skin define their culture?
| zo1 wrote:
| It's not "Water Fountains for Black People". It's "Water
| Fountain - White People Not Welcome". That's the part
| that's missing here, we're straw-manning as if white-people
| are affronted to this catering to a black-culture niche,
| not at all. I'll stand 100% corrected if this new service
| hosts white-people, white-actors and white-content that
| black-people would enjoy watching, and is staffed by an
| inclusive mix of black and white employees.
|
| Then again, we live in a society where discrimination
| against white people is 100% legal and promoted, so I won't
| have much hope for this being inclusive for all.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Why so hung up on that though? White actors and content
| are already available over at Universal, Paramount, MGM
| etc. It's like a white person complaining Howard won't
| admit them so they're stuck going to Yale. The idealism
| of 100% equality and 100% integration are appreciated, at
| least by me (white), but how is a black person supposed
| to experience the feeling of being in the majority the
| way white people take for granted? A: By sometimes being
| a group unto themselves, and not always a subgroup within
| a much larger mostly-white group.
| mikodin wrote:
| You walk up to a drink vending machine.
|
| You are in America:
|
| Vending machine for Americans sells Gatorade
|
| You are in Mexico
|
| Vending machine for Mexicans sells Agua Fresca
|
| Vending machine for Americans sells Gatorade
|
| This is no different then X for X people.
|
| They aren't saying you aren't welcome, it's more so that
| you likely don't know if you'll even like Agua Fresca.
| Mexicans know they love Agua Fresca.
|
| Maybe Mexicans don't really like Gatorade, but they know
| that the Americans in Mexico would like to have some
| Gatorade - boom it's a niche, it's a business, profit can
| be made.
|
| This is NOT discrimination, it's catering to a market.
| Discrimination is treating unjustly. It has nothing to do
| with providing X for X. Y could totally have X, no one
| cares, it's just that Y just may not enjoy it, relate to
| it or even want it.
| afavour wrote:
| > It's not "Water Fountains for Black People". It's
| "Water Fountain - White People Not Welcome"
|
| That's entirely your own interpretation and you might
| want to consider why you think this way.
|
| There is nothing stopping a white person from subscribing
| to "Netflix for black people" if they think the content
| may be of interest to them.
| fnord77 wrote:
| it's pretty bad. Not just on race. Youngest vs Young vs middle
| age vs old. leftist vs liberal vs conservative vs rightwing.
| LGBT vs non-LGBT. Working-class vs white collar class. nortnern
| states vs southern states. California vs flyover states.
| hipsters vs squares. punks vs. preps.
|
| It's really tiresome.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Really? Hipsters vs Squares is an equivocal history to that
| of LGBTQ+/Straight socio-political dynamics, or dare I say,
| the history of racial dynamics? Did you consult any queer
| folk on that one? Did you ask any Black folk about that?
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Just wait till you find out there's a National Anthem for Black
| People.
| Fellshard wrote:
| It isn't /completely/, but many are invested in making it more
| divided than not.
| illuminati1911 wrote:
| Exactly this. This racial segregation fetish mostly fuelled by
| leftwing Americans is insane.
| zentiggr wrote:
| I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here.
|
| We in the US have a long history of subjugating and violently
| suppressing the rights of black slaves (and every black
| person after outlawing slavery). The last few years have
| shown that the number of people who still believe that should
| happen is much larger than we suspected.
|
| It's not a fetish - it's a straight up fight to end
| discrimination against a group of people.
|
| If it wasn't for the rightwingers (American and otherwise)
| who want blacks to sit in the corner and shut up, or get
| attacked and discriminated on, there wouldn't be a problem.
| tines wrote:
| I feel like the cultural divide may be encouraged by certain
| groups. There's money to be made in market differentiation.
| tootie wrote:
| Having dedicated cultural venues or channels for a subculture
| isn't the same thing as like segregated bathrooms. It's more
| about appealing to a niche audience that isn't lucrative enough
| for a mass market purveyor. It's not really different from
| genre channels like sci-fi only or comedy only except that it's
| geared to an ethnic demographic who want more representation in
| their media. When a giant company like Netflix is allocating
| budget for new content, they will get the most returns by
| appealing to the largest of broadest groups.
| racl101 wrote:
| Exactly. Nobody complains about the Latino channels on TV.
| lol
| nix23 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do all black people in the US have the
| same cultural background? Or is it just the skin color?
| pedrosorio wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_culture
| LordHumungous wrote:
| Yes, except for more recent African immigrants.
| nix23 wrote:
| Ah, the wast minority since 1865?
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| That's precisely the trouble. In NI, when someone ask you
| if you are Catholic or Protestant and you answer you are
| Danish, they leave you alone. In the US on the other
| hand, you get dragged in no matter what. If you are from
| Nigeria you still get thrown in with regular "African
| Americans". That has interesting results, because for
| university admission purposes, black is black. However,
| amongst Nigerian immigrants education is highly regarded,
| amongst Americans in general, not so much. One would
| predict that at top-25 universities, Nigerians are highly
| overrepresented.
| nix23 wrote:
| Thanks! Made it even clearer what the problem in the US
| is, i lived for >1.5 y in Tanzania Kenya Rwanda and
| Namibia, and the Culture (Food, Music, Cloth, TV, Soap-
| operas, Religion etc) is so vastly different as if you
| would compare Iceland to South Italy.
|
| I think it terrible what the US is heading too
| (equalizing culture with skin-color)
| tootie wrote:
| Most African-Americans, particularly the descendants of
| slaves, have essentially been forced through a cultural
| funnel to become a new thing. Up until retail DNA
| testing, the average AA person would have no idea if
| their ancestors were from Angola or Sudan or Zimbabwe.
| Teaching ancestral language and culture was generally
| forbidden. People from a vast set of backgrounds were
| forced together. Sometimes bred against their will. We
| are not "heading to" equating culture with skin color, we
| did it as a matter of policy centuries ago. And it's
| produced an incredibly vibrant culture at that. African-
| Americans are arguably the most significant cultural
| force in the world through music and entertainment.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Americans are arguably the most significant cultural
| force in the world through music and entertainment.
|
| Oh man that's some small minded simpleton-vibes here :)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Slavery crushed a lot of them into a cultural group with
| a shared history no matter where their ancestors
| originally came from or their cultural backgrounds.
|
| There are of course those who immigrated later.
| [deleted]
| LordHumungous wrote:
| Yes, Black Americans have their own culture from music to
| literature to TV shows like Good Times and the Jeffersons. This
| is not seen as a bad thing here, it has produced many great
| things.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| menzoic wrote:
| Its simple really, the cultures in America are very diverse,
| which may not be the case in your country.
|
| Indian Americans regularly consume music and foods that most
| other Americans don't.
|
| Hispanic Americans mostly are bilingual with Spanish/English.
| There are more spanish only speaking hispanics than there are
| english only speaking.
|
| America has a history of racists laws (goverment) and bylaws
| (corporations, institutions, universities) created directly to
| disenfranchise non-whites that shaped present day distribution
| of races in different states, neighborhoods, socioeconomic
| status, cultural values and more.
|
| As recently as the 60s, blacks were expressly banned from many
| colleges so in order to fill the gap, HBCU (Historically Black
| Colleges & Universities) were created because black people had
| no good options.
|
| Most media in America is created by whites and the stories are
| based largely on white American culture. The Indian and Chinese
| Americans are another group that have a very hard time finding
| tv shows and movies that resonate with their culture.
| BlackOakTV looks like an attempt to offer more content
| representing the real differences in black American culture
| written from the perspective of those who actually understand
| it.
| josteink wrote:
| Seconding this.
|
| And imagine the outrage if someone had made "X for _white_
| people". There'd be riots in streets.
|
| The bizarreness and racist double standard behind this is just
| astounding seen from the outside.
| ohitsdom wrote:
| I hear this argument a lot and people use examples like BET
| and black churches. But take a step back and look at what led
| to black-specific things. MTV hardly played black artists.
| White churches excluded and actively attacked black
| Christians.
|
| White has been the default in America for a long time. Seems
| like that's slowly starting to change but until it does,
| there's going to be a need for things specifically targeted
| at minority groups.
| mrits wrote:
| When I think of MTV in the early 90s I actually think of LL
| Cool J.
| bluedino wrote:
| People pretend there wasn't a show called "Yo! MTV Raps"
| blackgirldev wrote:
| Because rap music is/was the only black music.
| bluedino wrote:
| MTV also played the Jacksons, Lionel Richie, Tina
| Turner...
| blackgirldev wrote:
| No Anita Baker, Mica Paris, Patti Austin, Luther
| Vandross.
|
| Not saying there were no Black artists: just saying that
| Black culture wrapped in what white people accept, like
| is not enough for the Black community.
|
| Edit: you guys downvoting me are likely too young to
| remember day one on MTV when stuff Blacks actually
| listened to was not featured on MTV until hiphop culture
| forced the issue.
|
| Black influence on mainstream music came at a huge cost
| to Black music stars. They were copied but mostly not
| included unless they paid homage. Horrible place for them
| truly.
|
| You have minimal idea about what Black people are really
| about without another white person's filter because
| that's how it has always been even on BET.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| You wrote: <<<MTV hardly played black artists.>>>
|
| I saw this interview recently: <<<David Bowie Criticizes
| MTV for Not Playing Videos by Black Artists | MTV News>>
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGiVzIr8Qg
|
| It blew me away. He is so on point!
| [deleted]
| werber wrote:
| In a majority white country you don't need to say x for white
| people, because that's the default. X for minority group
| isn't a double standard, it's a deviation from the norm. For
| example, it's pretty common to have x for lgbt people and
| it's pretty well understood that it's not a double standard
| because we accept that being straight is the norm.
| rory wrote:
| > _In a majority white country you don 't need to say x for
| white people, because that's the default_
|
| If it would merely be a redundancy, why would it provoke
| outrage? "Conservative Talk Radio" seems pretty redundant
| to me, but doesn't provoke any emotion.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Yes and no. In my opinion...
|
| If it's "focuses on content for <minority group>", that's
| great. Minorities tend to underrepresented and trying to
| address that balance by creating more for them is all
| bonus.
|
| If it's "excludes all but <minority group>", I am not a
| fan; I thin it causes resentment. The ability to have a
| group that allows <minority> but not <majority>, but not
| have a group that allows <majority> but not <minority>, is
| _wrong_ in my mind. Admittedly, having a group that allows
| both but focuses on <minority> so that <majority> is
| unlikely to be interested in joining is reasonable.
|
| I guess the act of specifically excluding/disallowing a
| group, unless it's acceptable for _all_ groups to do the
| same, inherently conveys "you are the worse of the two
| groups". It's insulting and an attack.
| werber wrote:
| I understand the point you're trying to make, but unless
| they're excluding white people from subscribing I have a
| hard time accepting it. An industry that comes to mind is
| haircare, there are tons of brands and a long history of
| companies that explictly cater to black hair (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madam_C._J._Walker , is a
| great person to look into ). I can buy products from
| those companies, despite their focus being on the black
| community, and many being black owned. Conversely, the
| majority of haircare products available cater to more
| traditionally white hair types and black people are free
| to buy them. There is no exclusion, just a market where
| the majority of the products cater to the majority of
| people, and there was a market need filled to cater to
| the minority. A haircare company in say, Nigeria, would
| not have to go out of their way to say it's catering to
| black hair, just like Nollywood does not have to say it's
| featuring black voices, it's just understood that it's a
| representation of the majority of the population.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > but unless they're excluding white people from
| subscribing I have a hard time accepting it
|
| My apologies; I must not have been clear. Nothing here is
| an example of something I have an issue with. I was
| merely pointing out that having "X for <minority>" can go
| two ways; promote the minority, or exclude the majority.
| The former is great, the later is not.
|
| I wasn't, in any way, trying to indicate the post is
| doing the wrong thing. As others have noted, it sounds
| like a Netflix-ey version of BET which, as far as I know,
| hasbeen nothing but positive.
| allenbrunson wrote:
| with precious few exceptions, pretty much every media outlet
| in the USA is _already_ "X for white people." it's not
| necessary to phrase it that way, everybody already knows.
|
| personally, i think it's great that the founders have chosen
| to sell this as "X for black people." it is much more honest
| and cuts right to the point. if they had not, if they had
| instead chosen words like "diversity," then inevitable drill-
| downs would be criticizing them for trying to hide their true
| intentions.
| tptacek wrote:
| Huh? They do make TV for white people. There's Polish TV,
| there's Russian TV, there's German TV, name it.
|
| It's rude to troll on someone's Launch thread.
| GordonS wrote:
| Having an opinion is not trolling - I would guess the OP
| wants honest feedback.
|
| Personally, I'm divided on how I feel about this launch,
| but if there is a market for it anywhere, it's the US, with
| its deep-rooted racial divisions and disparities.
|
| The comparisons you are making seem very different, as they
| are based on language and global geography, rather than
| skin colour.
| tptacek wrote:
| "Black" is a culture; it's not merely a skin color. Our
| country kidnapped millions of people from the African
| content, stripped them of their heritage and family ties,
| and randomly moved them around plantations in the
| American south, then released them and spent 100+ years
| subjecting them to apartheid laws that they united to
| fight. It is a whole unique interesting thing (jazz, soul
| food, the Black church, the Harlem Renaissance), and is
| as much its own culture as any ethnicity that has a TV
| station.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Correction: Europeans BOUGHT millions of people from the
| African contenent FROM OTHER BLACK AFRICANS who had
| already stripped them of their heritage and family ties!
|
| Remember the Democrats little kneeling to BLM while
| wearing Kente scarves publicity stunt? The irony (or
| symbolism?) of the Democrats dressing up as Africa's most
| prolific slave traders was apparently lost on most
| people.
| eropple wrote:
| For those not in the United States: this is (and I assume
| the spittle-flecking about "kneeling to BLM" made this a
| tip for some people, but let's make the implicit part
| explicit) a very common point of rhetoric amongst slavery
| apologists and Lost Causers of many stripes.
|
| The idea of permission structures for white Americans
| being somehow erected because some ethnic groups and
| communities sold people _from other ethnic groups and
| communities_ (because, and I apologize if this is obvious
| to some readers, the compaction of people of African
| descent into "African-American" is, for obvious reasons,
| something _here_ and not _there_ ) is one of a set of
| apologetics in common use in the United States designed
| to erase the complicity of our forebears.
|
| Good luck to BlackOakTV. I look forward to seeing what
| happens next for you all.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| The complicity of our forebearers? So we'll be sending a
| bill to Ghana for reparations then right?
| Veen wrote:
| Do you think there aren't Black Germans and Asian Russians?
| afavour wrote:
| > imagine the outrage if someone had made "X for white
| people". There'd be riots in streets.
|
| The difference between majority and minority is surely not
| that difficult to comprehend from outside the US?
| josteink wrote:
| They are only a "minority" because someone decided to come
| up with a way (race) to divide people into groups where one
| group is bound to end up smaller, and somehow claim that
| division is of significant importance.
|
| IMO the solution to that problem is definitely _not_ to
| reinforce that division.
| werber wrote:
| The United States is 76.3% white (
| https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
| ), it's not a division it's a number, there are just
| literally less people of color in the country, a minority
| of the population.
| csmpltn wrote:
| > "The United States is 76.3% white (
| https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
| ), it's not a division it's a number, there are just
| literally less people of color in the country, a minority
| of the population."
|
| Will it be racist to continue using this terminology
| then, once the US reaches 50-50?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 60% if you exclude Hispanics. Which, of course, raises
| its own questions about categorizations and who gets to
| make the definitions.
| afavour wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint but as the sibling
| comment pointed out, America is 76.3% white. If the push
| is "remove all the divisions, everyone is part of one
| group" then the interests of the majority within that
| group will dominate.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I believe that 76.3% includes hispanics, and hispanics
| are considered a minority. When people talk about whites
| being the majority, my inclination is to assume they're
| talking about non-hispanic. That lowers the percentage to
| around 60% or so (I'm not sure on that number); still a
| majority, but not as much so.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > because someone decided to come up with a way (race) to
| divide people into groups where one group is bound to end
| up smaller
|
| Well, yes, and this was codified into US law until the
| last bits were finally suppressed in the 1960s, but that
| doesn't mean the underlying racism has been eliminated as
| well.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| "someone decided to come up with a way (race) to divide
| people into groups where one group is bound"
|
| So close, and yet so far.
| ubercore wrote:
| The concept of racist doesn't work that way, you can't just
| reverse the positions to make a statement.
| treis wrote:
| >And imagine the outrage if someone had made "X for white
| people". There'd be riots in streets.
|
| The idea is that "X" is de facto "X for white people" in
| America. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's the
| argument.
| josteink wrote:
| Thanks for the constructive reply. I wasn't aware of such
| default assumptions.
|
| I still thinks it sounds like nonsense, but at least it
| explains the massive downvotes Im getting :D
|
| It must be hard to live in a country where everyone is so
| obsessed with race, yet supposedly also how it "is not
| important". To me that seems like a massive contradiction.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| The problem is that this country has an extremely long
| history being obsessed with race, mainly by
| systematically stripping away the humanity of anyone
| considered nonwhite. This was most prominently to black
| people, to the point where they were literally property
| to wealthy whites, and once they stopped being property
| it was common to extrajudicially hunt them down and kill
| them in many primarily white communities for things like
| staying overnight.
|
| In america there are black people alive who weren't
| allowed to vote because of their race.
|
| Given the history of race in america it makes total sense
| that america is still grappling with race while also
| there is significant pushback against that grappling.
| krapp wrote:
| > Thanks for the constructive reply. I wasn't aware of
| such default assumptions.
|
| Perhaps you should put some effort into self-education
| and understand the context of race and racism in America
| before making qualitative statements about things you
| seem to not even grasp the basics of.
| zentiggr wrote:
| It's not "IS not important"... it's "SHOULDN'T be
| important".
|
| Bigotry, hatred, and violence, whether explicit or less
| obvious (voting rights, bias in many services etc) is the
| problem that some us unfortunately continue and the rest
| of us want to end.
| daviddaviddavid wrote:
| Completely agree, especially since it would be pretty easy to
| reword things to focus on the diversity of the content as
| opposed to the intended audience, thereby removing the
| divisiveness inherent in the title.
| raclage wrote:
| "divisiveness inherent in the title" seems wildly overblown
| to me. Isn't identifying an underserved audience and
| marketing to them like a cornerstone of business? Do you feel
| that hair products marketed toward Black people are divisive?
| Subscription boxes for millennials? Shoes for moms?
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I suspect you are from a fairly small homogeneous country. It
| hard to understand the racial dynamics of a very large diverse
| country if you haven't lived there.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Someone from India, a fairy large and diverse country, might
| have the same difficulty understanding it.
| Anisa_Mirza wrote:
| As someone who lived in Italy and Pakistan all her K-12
| education years, your comment is so damn off base. Are you
| seriously saying that India (and Pakistan for that matter)
| have the same racial dynamic as America? Yes, India is
| diverse. Yes, we are not all the same. But that is not akin
| to the racial structures I have seen in the US.
| neonate wrote:
| Are you sure you read that comment correctly? It seems to
| me to be making the same point that you are, i.e. exactly
| the opposite of how you've interpreted it.
| tekromancr wrote:
| Indian Muslims, a group that experiences increasing
| marginalization within that large diverse country; would
| probably not
| tisthetruth wrote:
| I agree. This encourages segregation, which if i remember
| correctly was a pretty big issue in America. Who would have
| thought that a movement to treat people more equally has
| offspring ideas which cause more segregation. What a joke. This
| is just a greedy attempt to capitalize on the divide in the US
| and profit off it. How very American of you to put profit
| against society's current landscape. Carry on. However maybe,
| just maybe you should focus your efforts on an idea that is
| more integrating vs divisive.
|
| What's next? Here are a few ideas:
|
| The NBA channel for white people and please only white
| basketball players on the teams Track and Field channel for
| asian people with only asian athletes on the teams Chess for
| dogs channel with only dogs playing chess, poor cats they are
| not allowed to play chess on this channel Landscaping for black
| people with only black landscapers on the shows
|
| What i like about the porn industry is there are many sub-
| genres within it, so one could argue that this BlackOakTV is an
| attempt at a subgenre. However at a time like this in the US...
| You know, Edward Bernay's was right in his book Propaganda,
| create a suggestive environment and people will buy what ever
| the environment suggests and they will think it was their own
| idea for wanting to buy it. But who knows, maybe the equality
| and diversity crowd really is screaming inside for more
| segregation and preventing all sorts of freudian slips from
| surfacing.
|
| Actually i have a better idea for the chess dogs, let's only
| have dalmatian dogs playing chess and keep golden retrievers
| from enjoying any media attention while playing chess on this
| channel. This will lead to great narratives in the minds of the
| niche consumers and dalmatian ownership will skyrocket along
| with chess board sales.
|
| Anyone want to give me funding?
|
| Good luck with it regardless. More friction in the market means
| someone is making money. Let it rip.
| rdiddly wrote:
| It looks to me like simple economics - there's a niche market
| with unmet demand.
| dneri wrote:
| This was my first thought as well, an I'm American. Word to OP,
| this is a catchy title but I would be really careful going out
| of the gate with that kind of slogan.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I'm just being honest right now, and I know this is an
| unpopular opinion, but this is brilliant right now in this
| moment.
|
| These are entrepreneurs. Their job is not to teach everyone
| melting pot kumbayah culture. Their job is to make money for
| themselves and their investors. After about 35 years of
| travel and living I'm intimately familiar with Africa and
| Asia. There are changes in Africa right now. Changes that
| feel much different than any changes I've lived through
| previously, and this product strikes a brilliantly resonant
| chord with those changes. People, particularly the 18-35
| demographic in Africa, will eat this up. They get some black
| american and african celebrities along with someone like Wode
| Maya on this thing, and having blackoak would become a status
| symbol in Africa. At least among the young.
|
| Sure, not great for global society, but awesome for business.
| Only people who don't realize how quickly Africa is growing
| would think otherwise.
| spicymaki wrote:
| > This was my first thought as well, an I'm American.
|
| However, X for white people is often the default case and is
| left unsaid. As an American you should be well versed in
| this. No one is saying that non-black people cannot watch the
| content, the implication is that the content it is tailored
| for black people.
| dathinab wrote:
| > "X for black people" sounds so bizarre to me(non-American).
| The cultural divide between the people must be insane.
|
| Is more or less what I thought, (with the difference that I
| thought "Y for Z people").
|
| So I can't judge if it's necessary or makes sense, but from the
| point of the author it seems to be the case.
|
| Which is sad as black people are not a small minority in the US
| and so I would expect more representation of them.
|
| I mean Netflix (or any thing similar) should be "for everyone"
| featuring a diverse mix at least similar to reality (or maybe
| slightly more diverse (1) ).
|
| (1): For <small> minorities in a country representation with a
| mix "like reality" would mean they would not get much
| representation as just a <small> number of content thingies
| would represent them. So increasing the degree of diversity
| above it is I think a good idea.
| cptaj wrote:
| Man, this is always such a spicy comment to make. Americans
| always get mad but its true. As a Venezuelan I always find the
| racism stuff coming from the US completely baffling.
|
| I think most of the world is just completely weirded out by how
| US culture tackles this issue.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Much of the rest of the world is more casually comfortable
| with racism, it does not cause the angst that it does in the
| US.
| okwubodu wrote:
| True. It's very funny when people from countries that could
| be considered the forefathers of racism down the US for
| talking about it while refusing to acknowledge the cries of
| their own underclass.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| It's more understandable when you think about the Irish
| Troubles. The Black-White issue is really an interethnic
| conflict.
| [deleted]
| Veen wrote:
| "Neflix for Protestants" and "Netflix for Catholics" would be
| considered similarly unhelpful.
| blueblisters wrote:
| How do you solve the problem of discovery? You have a decent
| sized catalog for just having graduated from an accelerator. But,
| say, for someone who doesn't know any of these shows, but could
| potentially be looking for black-focused content, how do they go
| about finding something they like? Are any of the shows you host
| known independently outside the platform?
| threwbbbb wrote:
| How is this not divide and concur? Split the races into ever
| smaller groups so you can influence them more easily. Social
| Studies is doing what communism is doing in China without the AI.
| binaryorganic wrote:
| ITT: Whyt folx suggesting that curating media that targets a
| specific cultural audience is problematic without realizing that
| they already enjoy that same experience every day of their lives.
|
| But I love it. One thought that comes to me: If you're successful
| at this, you probably get to repeat the story of the big record
| labels poaching black creators in the 1920s. That'd be good
| history to dive into and weave into the marketing narrative you
| pitch to your creators. A solid outreach and education piece for
| indie makers could have lasting societal impact all on its own.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Demeaning racial labels and slurs have no place on HN.
| binaryorganic wrote:
| I agree completely. Though I'm confused by your use of the
| world slur. Are you referencing my use of "whyt"?
|
| Happy to discuss if you're interested in discussion.
| randompwd wrote:
| In the above comment, an American continuing to think that
| everything and anything is centered around USA and it's
| history.
|
| Many of us are from countries where segregationary nonsense
| like this is rightly found to be disgusting.
|
| But hey, it's HN, let's drive fractures deeper as there's a
| buck to be made.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| If you manage to talk to Tyler Perry I have a pitch for a new
| movie idea.
|
| "Tyler Perry's Madea's Gillian's Island".
|
| Basically, Madea wins some sort of lottery and wins a free
| vacation all expenses paid to a resort in Mexico with her and the
| gang (and tyler + his daughter, and her new boyfriend) but the
| plane goes down over the bermuda triangle and they end up shored
| up on an unknown island.
|
| Throughout the film tyler's daughters boyfriend (who tyler thinks
| is a loser, gangster) has to work along with tyler to help the
| family survive. Madea does her usual thing, and mostly tans on
| the beach, complains and yells at people.
|
| The heartwarming message of uniting in the face of disaster,
| combined the usual Madea hijinks are sure to make this a non-stop
| blast of a film.
|
| plot twist: madea had a cell phone that works the whole time, but
| refused to use it in order to make the family bond.
|
| Please get this to the higher ups as I really want to see this
| film made.
| k12sosse wrote:
| So; Gilligan's Island _for black people_
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I can't find the quote from Tyler Perry, but Madea is
| definitely not just for Black people. All of his stories are
| like this: they trick you into watching because it's funny,
| and easy to watch - but at the same time every story also had
| hard to talk about problems related to things like family
| life, drugs, intramarital issues, and prostitution. I
| listened to an interview with Tyler and he called it a bait-
| and-switch.
|
| Tyler Perry has already played into film tropes with Boo! and
| Boo! 2, where Madea gets into some ghoulish hijinks - so
| Madea's Gilligan's Island would be along those lines.
|
| I love tropes, or playing with tropes more like. it's an
| inversion of science fiction - where sci-fi relies on
| changing the parameters of the world (What if we had robots?
| what if we had telepathy? Predict t he future? How would
| human life change? What would happen?), a play on tropes
| allows you to explore how a character you already know might
| deal with a situation that has been played out manifold
| times.
|
| Yes, Madea is made for black people, but I'm not black, and I
| absolutely adore Madea films. I wish more films were made
| like this - it's an underrepresented category in film. It's
| been tried by some christian film makers, but they usually
| come of hard on the nose and aren't enjoyable. Or you have
| just straight comedies, okay fine. How about we mingle the
| two and use the story to convey a clear message everyone can
| grasp? I love it - through all of Madea's characters personal
| faults, and through the other characters faults, trials and
| tribulations, there's redemption.
|
| Tyler perry, please make this movie.
| kbelder wrote:
| I have never watched a Medea flick in my life, but now I
| want to, you made such a strong case. The thought of a
| lighthearted movie with unexpected soul and a strong,
| positive message is so appealing.
| k12sosse wrote:
| I can enjoy TP films, for the record. I agree with those
| statements. Why don't you write the teleplay and try to
| shop it around? You seem invested in the idea!
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| while writing this over lunch I was thinking... wait how
| hard is it to write this? Turns out it's hard, and I'd
| have to re-read all the madea scripts to understand how
| the interactions work, plus I don't feel like I have a
| perfect handle on throwing Madea into the abyss and
| seeing what happens. In short, it would be fan-fic rather
| than genuine.
|
| What I want is Tyler Perry & Co to write this movie.
|
| Tyler, I don't want any money, I don't want anything more
| than having this film made! (you could give me a little
| cameo though, I'll be a busboy or something)
| edoceo wrote:
| Can you also get those 90s shows back in your platform? Martin,
| Fresh Prince, Roc, etc. Uncle Phil the pool shark. Also, In
| Living Color. Have classics and new content too.
| throwyourkid wrote:
| Why YC fund this kind of startup.
|
| I am fine if you want to downvote me but this kind of things I
| don't want to exist.
|
| There are other ways to do this but building a streaming service
| for people based on their race is too much extreme.
|
| I think people should try to bring people together instead of
| further separating based on their Race.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't hijack top comments by replying with non-replies,
| and certainly not with flamebait.
|
| We detached this comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28089696.
| throwyourkid wrote:
| I love you dang but I guess there is no free speech.
| dang wrote:
| That's a bit like saying "I guess there is no freedom" when
| you don't get to move your knight like a bishop. We're
| playing a particular game here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dat
| eRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Discussing the negative social repercussions of the product
| isn't flamebait. It's pretty important.
| alasano wrote:
| It feels like people (early on in this thread) are more offended
| because of the chosen phrasing in the title? Are those same
| people offended by BET?
|
| With the accompanying explanation by Uzo0312, how is this racist?
|
| "For black people" does not mean "Not for any other people". I
| want to watch great content and if Blackoak produces it, I'll
| watch it like I would with any other provider.
|
| The fact that they'll encourage and fund more black creators
| seems like a great thing. I'm sure there are funds out there for
| women directors, are those sexist?
|
| Netflix for Women focusing on stories with female leads or with
| female directors doesn't sound offensive to me either.
|
| Good luck with Blackoak, it seems like there is a great market
| for it and it will elevate black creators.
| hn8788 wrote:
| My issue with "for black people" isn't that it's exclusionary
| against other races, but that it implies all black people are a
| culturally homogenous group. Just changing the description to
| "Netflix for black creators" would be more descriptive of the
| actual service, and doesn't imply "if you're a black person,
| these are the shows you should like".
| alasano wrote:
| I agree that there are better possible taglines for the
| service.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Right or Latin Americana television stations? Or St. Paddys
| day?
|
| Celebrating a culture is not racist.
| anthk wrote:
| Not even Spain is homogeneous (each Iberian region is highly
| prominent), just imagine all the Hispanic subcultures all
| over the Atlantic.
| cryptoaitrader wrote:
| Why is it socially acceptable to to brand products and services
| based upon "serving" race? "a subscription video platform serving
| black audiences by making it easy for them to watch TV shows and
| movies that feature black stories and characters." A video
| platform service white audience by making it easy for them to
| watch TV shows and movies that feature "white" stories and
| characters wouldnt this be considered racist?
| ekianjo wrote:
| So next is Netflix for asian americans, Netflix for blonde women,
| and why not Netflix for ugly people who are sick of only watching
| beautiful people on screen?
|
| The good thing business wise I guess is that the market
| possibilities are infinite, but I am not sure what world you want
| to create.
| zentiggr wrote:
| So you're opposed to the basic concept of marketing niches?
| IanClarke wrote:
| It seems to make no sense the way they do it and he is
| pointing that out.
|
| I am an Airbnb host and once rented to a black couple for a
| month.
|
| After that I had a lot of "black" content (people) suggested
| on my youtube.
|
| It's a difficult(AI), but especially _solved_ problem that
| only big companies have and they are obviously doing
| (approaching - as a small startup) it wrong...
|
| ... which is kind of a surprise, because YC is such a
| renowned VC /incubator.
|
| Looking at the other startups they support lately it is sad
| to see what they have become: Supporting minoritie's
| interests for the sake of it (statistics).
| gpm wrote:
| Not the person you're replying to, but thinking about this
| question, I think I am for distribution channels.
|
| A society based on this is running in an inefficient way,
| people duplicating work, not because they are competing to be
| better, but just because. That's got to be bad.
|
| A society segmenting what content is available you based on
| your demographic (even via self selection) seems bad. We
| should be encouraging cross-over between different groups,
| not erecting barriers, such as artificially grouping content
| into classes targeted at a niche and making you pay for an
| entire class at a time.
|
| Pay per individual item, and pay for everything, both seem
| like models much more likely to create a healthy society.
|
| I guess the problem with the former model is that people
| don't like it, and the latter model is that it creates a few
| gatekeepers who decide what gets funding. Charitably this
| sort of niche based company can be seen as a workaround to
| that gatekeeper problem, but I'm really not sold in this
| instance (of course I happen not to be the target market
| either, neither being much into TV nor black, edit: nor
| american, so I guess I don't need to be sold).
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Dang is not going to have a fun day today.
| orky56 wrote:
| Congratulations on YC, pursuing your dreams, and taking on an
| idea that is obviously somewhat controversial. Based on YouTube,
| social media platforms, and the Internet in general, our worlds
| are becoming more polarized and segregated by default whether
| it's from politics or sports. The end result is a fight/flight
| mindset when it comes to culture and identity. It's important to
| fight for the right balance or else we may be left with a very
| White & western hegemony. This pendulum is very important to
| track and ensure extremism is not practiced.
|
| In my opinion, we need to recognize the voices and stories of
| black communities and provide access to platforms where creators
| and actors can express themselves genuinely. As you recognize,
| there's a disparity between the 90s where this was more
| successful to where we are at today. You could argue the black
| film industry has evolved and adapted from the 60s and 70s to
| where it's at today, not getting worse or quieter but more niche.
|
| Is the goal to create and perpetuate insular communities of
| color? Is it to equally provide opportunities of mixed cultures
| and ethnicities? Can black creators easily showcase stories of
| non-black stories? Each of us lives in very different worlds of
| integration and has different stories we want to share. A
| community and platform that can address everything with
| transparency and sustainability is going to win because imo
| that's the bigger opportunity.
| kaeruct wrote:
| I would suggest increasing the contrast on your text and button
| colors. Also maybe adding a transparent-to-black gradient on the
| hero video? The copy above it is hard to read while it is
| loading. Best of luck with this enterprise!
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| This is a great idea. Good luck!
| daralthus wrote:
| When it comes to tech, look around for Netflix as a service
| providers out there so you can just focus on content. One of the
| bigger ones I know is https://www.accedo.tv but I am sure the
| commenters will help you find more.
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| Congratulations on re-inventing UPN
| poisonarena wrote:
| UPN went through many phases, and I enjoyed them all!
| tomp wrote:
| Wow, I didn't think YCombinator was so eager to jump on the
| racism train! What's next, _Funeral services for Jews_?
| Miner49er wrote:
| Is this sarcasm? That's probably a real thing. Different
| cultures have different funeral services Just like different
| cultures have different art, hence this company.
| endisneigh wrote:
| What would be wrong with that? Different ethnic groups have
| different expectations for what a funeral means.
|
| You couldn't have picked a worse example lmao
| bsenftner wrote:
| This really strikes me as multi-level genius. Kudos to you and
| your team getting to launch. I look forward to your service!
| [deleted]
| mgax wrote:
| "Vid is a subscription video platform serving white audiences by
| making it easy for them to watch TV shows and movies that feature
| white stories and characters."
|
| In most of mainland Europe this woukd be against the law
| [deleted]
| ubercore wrote:
| No, it wouldn't. Please back that statement up.
| frereubu wrote:
| White stories and characters are not under-represented in
| European media, so this is a non-sequitur.
| blueclue7 wrote:
| People like MLK fought for equality. Today, you see black people
| fight for segregation by instituting things like this. The
| question is why? The answer, I believe, is not to represent the
| underrepresented as stated here but more obviously use "for
| blacks" as a marketing device to make money.
| IanClarke wrote:
| The solution to this problem is very complex and occurs once you
| scale. The companies facing this problem are big and have the
| resources to solve it. The solution is non-trivial and requires a
| lot of smart engineers and AI. All the huge companies have
| actually solved this problem in reasonable ways. It's what "the
| AI revolution" is all about. It's kind of a solved problem +
| heavily in the making. To try and approach this problem as a
| startup is just the wrong approach from a "sequence of events"
| and also "logical" perspective: You have to build something else
| successful first and then adjust/expand into multiple markets.
| Silicon Valley is not about targeting niche markets. It's about
| capturing one, ideally big market (typically "the us market")
| _first_ and then expanding into others (typically all the
| countries in the world). The market for black people content
| (~12% of the us population) is "one of those" "subsequent"
| markets.
| ju_sh wrote:
| Here's an idea - Build a tool that helps users discover black
| content on the internet rather than furthering the divide by
| building a racially segregated platform.
| dang wrote:
| Make your substantive points without flamebait please.
|
| Without snark also.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| csmpltn wrote:
| I'll see you on the "Netflix for white people" thread.
| essem wrote:
| Racial segregation is a stretch. They do not block you from
| subscribing if you're not black.
| kadabra9 wrote:
| Realistically though, how many white people would pay for a
| platform with all black content, one that they are told is
| explicitly _not_ for them?
| emodendroket wrote:
| I am not persuaded those numbers would look better with
| different messaging but the same content.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| My understanding is that they may not need to cater to
| white people, but they also don't need to exclude them
| either. Black hair often has a texture that requires
| specialized hair products and the people who make them can
| make a ton of money. It isn't excluding white people to
| cater to black people.
| kadabra9 wrote:
| I'm not saying they're excluding them. Black hair
| products are a great analogy actually. Virtually no white
| people buy them, and virtually no white people will sub
| to a platform like this. There will likely be slightly
| more white subscribers to Black Oak than there are white
| users of black hair care products, but my point is the
| number will be very small. That's OK. Its not marketed to
| them.
|
| Black hair products can be a thriving business, just as
| this potentially can be as well.
| runbathtime wrote:
| It is a big market actually. Kendi has made a lot of money
| off of the amount of whites that enjoy and pay to be told
| they are bad ppl with white privilege.
| zentiggr wrote:
| You need to justify how "for <group>" is exclusionary, as
| opposed to it's normal meaning of "focusing on <group>".
| kadabra9 wrote:
| Saying it is For <group> implies it is _not_ for other
| groups.
|
| Again, realistically, how many white people would pay for
| a platform like this? If you think the number is
| substantial you are delusional. For starters, its being
| marketed "for black people", its all black content, and
| other platforms e.g Netflix already have content from
| black creators (albeit not as focused)
|
| Having said that, they do _not_ need white people to sub
| to build a viable business. I think it could work - the
| real secret sauce will be in securing great content
| naturally. But positioning your business as "$X for
| black people" does pigeon hole their potential market
| quite a bit.
| zentiggr wrote:
| > Saying it is For <group> implies it is not for other
| groups.
|
| Umm, no? Like I tried to convey in my original comment,
| "for <group>" means a focus on that group, as opposed to
| just general content. Nothing I've ever come across that
| was marketed as "for <>" has ever been intended to
| exclude me as a non-member, nor have I ever interpreted
| it that way.
|
| I suspect you have a bias to hear it as exclusionary more
| than is typical.
|
| Anecdotally, I watch BET fairly regularly, if not often.
| I'm aware that it's business model is generally content
| by black creators, for black consumers, but again, I
| don't remember any hints anywhere of implications of "if
| you're not black, you can go". If anything, wider viewing
| would be more informative and promote sharing across
| groups.
| kadabra9 wrote:
| Ah yes, the classic tripe "You disagree with me, so
| therefore you must be biased".
| tptacek wrote:
| No, it doesn't. It just needs to for this thread to have
| any oxygen, and so it will here until this tiny micro-
| current of the discourse dies out.
| kbelder wrote:
| Crunchyroll keeps getting mentioned here, as a success
| story. Certainly, they focus nearly exclusively on Japanese
| content.
|
| But they in no way market to Japanese, or Asians in
| general. I think that is the key.
|
| You should be marketing "black content for everybody", not
| "content for black people". Sure, the segment that responds
| will be heavily slanted to certain demographics, but at
| least you aren't putting up artificial barriers, and you'll
| stir up a lot less upfront negative reactions.
|
| Unless controversy is part of the marketing strategy, which
| is risky, but sometimes works.
| [deleted]
| ju_sh wrote:
| No, but the exclusive intent has been made clear with the
| title "Netflix for black people".
|
| Feels like some kind of "Outrage marketing" strategy, I mean,
| look how this thread has blown up over the last hour. I'm
| sure the OP is smart and knew what they were doing when
| wording this post.
| mrozbarry wrote:
| I guess something to ask is if black content creators are among
| the most creative, and black consumers are among the most
| energetic and prolific users, are you only attributing their lack
| of success(?) on youtube because of algorithms?
|
| If it's just a question of likes/subscriptions/shares, then the
| statement that they are the most energetic and prolific users
| seems incorrect.
|
| If it's something else, can we identify what the problem is with
| some other algorithm that is not likes/subscribes/shares?
|
| I hope your plans for blackoak is successful, but I'm not sure it
| solves the problem you're describing. The biggest issue is places
| like netflix and youtube have a huge market share, and if you are
| just hosting/moving content off those platforms, you risk your
| content creators having less recognition unless you can gain
| enough traction. On top of that, if you're competing in the paid
| streaming market, like netflix/hulu/prime/disney/etc., now you're
| telling your market to pay for another service on top of the
| things they already subscribe to.
|
| So again, best of luck, hopefully you have plans to solve or
| mitigate what I just described.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > are you only attributing their lack of success(?) on youtube
| because of algorithms
|
| They attribute it also to the comments. Nobody wants to deal
| with racists attacks every time they post something.
| rpmisms wrote:
| In my experience, questioning the logic behind marketing-speak
| just gets you more marketing-speak. This seems like a well-
| intentioned idea, but I doubt it'll actually go anywhere. " _x_
| for _y_ group " rarely works, " _x_ without _z_ problem " seems
| to work a lot better.
| mattzito wrote:
| I will say that there are verticals where "x for y" group do
| very well - media and content and dating apps come to mind as
| one. It seems to work better where there's an aspect of
| cultural or group identity that comes along with the "Y", and
| I think this project would qualify as that.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| I'm curious about the visual design - if you're catering
| exclusively to black people how does that influence your design
| decisions?
| jegaman wrote:
| Obviously dark theme is the default one.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Try and showcase some African content - there is big film
| industry in places like Nigeria/Uganda and Ghana.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There's also some fascinating stuff going on with ultra-low-
| budget filmmaking in Uganda (for example, entire films done for
| under $100, including choreographed action scenes and basic
| special effects). It's like a fast-forward recreation of the
| early days of Hollywood.
| megraf wrote:
| I feel like this encourages a divide.
| zentiggr wrote:
| E.g. - Do you feel like the existence of ESPN forces a bigger
| divide between people who like sports and those who don't?
|
| If not, what's the difference? Each is a cultural group - one
| just has a history of being violently attacked and
| suppressed...
| depaya wrote:
| There is no inherent divide. If this was marketed as _only_ for
| Black people, other races are not welcome to watch, sure. If
| this company was vocally _against_ Netflix and demanding Black
| people watch this instead, sure. As far as I can see neither of
| these are true - this is a service aimed at delivering a
| certain type of content.
|
| Does the existence of ESPN encourage a divide between those who
| like sports and those that don't? Do Spanish-language channels
| encourage a divide between people who speak Spanish and those
| that don't?
| dont__panic wrote:
| If they plan on engaging in bidding wars with Netflix for
| exclusive content (as all streaming services tend to do),
| won't they tend to deprive Netflix and other streaming
| services of content featuring black people? Since this
| service is inherently more niche than Netflix, it seems like
| that's going to result in black stories being harder to
| access for your average person. And given subscription
| fatigue levels, "just subscribe to this service for X
| content" is a hard sell these days.
| depaya wrote:
| That is an interesting point I hadn't considered.
|
| It seems to me that, unless this new service will be in the
| business of directly funding or creating their own content,
| it would be morally wrong for them to engage in exclusive
| content agreements.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| You do know that conventional TV has had this for ages? Ever
| heard of BET? Why shouldn't different cultures have different
| media that highlights stories that resonate with them?
|
| HN makes me realize why so many black people find the tech
| world hostile and stay away.
| [deleted]
| frereubu wrote:
| How does it "encourage" a divide rather than just represent a
| divide that exists?
|
| Edit: This feels a bit like the idea that showing children
| stories about gay people would somehow "turn them gay".
| slim wrote:
| By creating thought bubbles exactly like social media
| frereubu wrote:
| That implies people who subscribed to this service would
| entirely stop watching other content. But you don't think
| that, do you?
| zentiggr wrote:
| Considering there IS a divide, that there is a distinct
| American Black culture, that has gotten suppressed by way too
| many of us...
|
| This is a great way to encourage representation and sponsor
| more content within the culture, for everyone to enjoy as they
| see fit.
| sambooka wrote:
| This is a great idea! Looking forward to checking it out!
| preordained wrote:
| I love the look of your site. Very slick. Hope you crush it.
| eb0la wrote:
| I hope I am not the only one offended because there is a need for
| this.
|
| I wish someone with deep pockets will get the message, buy it,
| and add it to their (bigger) service offering.
| FirstLvR wrote:
| this is somewhat racist... but in a good way
|
| crazy you have to do this in order to give some people a chance
|
| youtube biase is a fact. good luck on the project!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I'm Russian and, probably, I don't really understand the
| situation with race in US.
|
| But I think that MLK was fighting against this "X for black
| people" thing. (X == buses, schools, shops, etc). Isn't it racism
| and segregation?
| ironMonkey wrote:
| Oh my, buddy, you had it even worse than the yanks did. Have
| you ever had an apology from your state for the serfdom, any
| reparations?
|
| The Atlantic empire enslaved people different by color,
| language, religion and used them as a tool for centuries. Now,
| they are attempting to fix it.
|
| The Rus' enslaved people of it's own creed, skin color and
| religion. Made them property as well. But, when serfdom
| cracked, everyone was like `okay moving on to the next chapter
| of our glorious history`.
|
| Why would you reckon you'd ever grasp foreign problems, when at
| your own house you were scammed like a sucker?
| neartheplain wrote:
| >Oh my, buddy, you had it even worse than the yanks did. Have
| you ever had an apology from your state for the serfdom, any
| reparations?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
|
| Condescending to others about their own country's history is
| not a good look.
| ironMonkey wrote:
| How does the OR even relates to a person not getting the
| race relations of the USA?
|
| I elaborated my view by pointing out their version of
| slavery was shushed and never addressed with. The
| descendants never draw conclusions from their own history,
| failing to understand what's the deal with USA at their
| current timeline.
|
| Looks like you're unaware of the
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution which
| steamrolled the foothold for hacks taking over (the October
| Revolution).
| dang wrote:
| We ban accounts that take HN threads into poisonous
| flamewars. The GP did that too, and shouldn't have, but this
| is a whole other level of nastiness and offtopicness. Please
| don't post like this to HN, if you want to keep commenting
| here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ironMonkey wrote:
| Do it!
| emerged wrote:
| I'm American and believe me, at least half of the country
| thinks shit like this is utterly insane and divisive. But there
| is no reasoning with ideologues.
| qkqk wrote:
| If you read more than the headline it might better your
| understanding.
|
| Racism is the belief that different races are distinctly
| inferior or superior to one another. [1] I don't see anything
| in the author's post or the product that indicates they believe
| Black people are racially superior.
|
| Segregation, specifically in context of what King was fighting
| for, means spatial or institutional separation of the races.
| [2] Clearly not the case here, they are pushing for _more_
| representation of Black people in media, not less.
|
| (There are other civil rights leaders you can invoke besides
| MLK when you're feigning outrage btw)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 'm Russian and, probably, I don't really understand the
| situation with race in US.
|
| Correct.
|
| > But I think that MLK was fighting against this "X for black
| people" thing.
|
| No, Dr. King was not fighting against Black-founded commercial
| services attempting to serve the particular interests of Black
| consumer. But, that's a pretty good illustration that your
| first sentence is correct (though its also a pretty good
| mimicry of American White conservatives coopting Dr. King, so,
| maybe you _do_ understand a bit about race-based political
| propaganda in America.)
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Hm. I'm sorry, it wasn't meant to be a flamebait. Also, can
| you please clarify about tangents? Looked up for a
| translation of the word 'tangent' and the meaning is still
| unclear. (English is not my first language)
| tptacek wrote:
| In the idiom, a tangent is a branching divergence from the
| main conversation; it's related to that conversation, but
| is taking it in a new direction. Tangents are fine, and
| often good, but we are careful about them here when they
| lead into predictable off-topic arguments.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| > we are careful about them here when they lead into
| predictable off-topic arguments.
|
| This is not remotely true of this site.
| tptacek wrote:
| You can add the worst "ostensibly" if it makes you feel
| better.
| dang wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I'm aware of your posts and I stand by my assertion.
| gibsonf1 wrote:
| Both Netflix and Amazon already have a "Black Stories" category -
| not sure how this could have a chance against that kind of
| competition.
| soheil wrote:
| Interesting idea. I don't think I've ever seen this many dead
| comments on any HN post. For those not wanting to miss on the
| action I highly recommend turning on your showdead setting.
| unmole wrote:
| I am not American but the overwhelming majority of the media I
| consume is American. Given the near hegemony of American popular
| culture, that is likely true for millions of non-Americans. All
| these people consume American content because they find it
| enjoyable and at some level relatable despite living in very
| different countries and not speaking English as their first
| language. At the end of the day, the human condition is universal
| in spite of the cultural frameworks in which it is experienced. I
| find it absolutely mind-boggling that Americans feel
| unrepresented by their own media because of the colour of their
| skin.
| da314pc wrote:
| I think its clear by your statement that you have no idea about
| America.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't be an asshole on HN. If you know more than
| someone else, that's great, but then please share some of
| what you know so the rest of us can learn. If you can't or
| don't want to, no problem--but then please don't post
| poisonous putdowns. They just make everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.
| ..
| gotostatement wrote:
| its not too hard to find people explaining that they do, and
| why they do (just google "representation matters" and im sure
| you'll find a lot). sounds like youre not open to learning
| about other peoples experience, or you simply dismiss it as
| whiny
| andrewzah wrote:
| This is a bit reductionistic and over-sells American media.
| People in other countries may watch American-made media _in
| addition to_ their own country 's media, unless it simply
| doesn't have any. Foreign media, is also just that: foreign
| media. It's an entirely different context when watching, say,
| dramas made and set in Taiwan or Korea.
|
| The fact of the matter is that in American media, most of the
| actors, writers, and producers are from one group in terms of
| looks. How is it "mind boggling" to think about how it feels to
| rarely see someone who looks like you in popular media (and
| almost never for leads in films)? Or when someone like you is
| depicted, it's usually a tired trope or racial stereotype?
|
| America is extremely diverse and yet our media
| disproportionately represents one type of person, and only very
| recently has begun to correct itself. It's easy to say "hey,
| we're all Americans", when most people in media look like us.
| Would you say the same thing if most tv shows and nearly all
| lead roles in films were solely of Asian-Americans? The answer
| is clearly no.
| firekvz wrote:
| Unless you live on a huge country (china, india, russia,
| etc), for an ordinary person, they will consume more media
| from the country that influences them, than their own
| country.
|
| Big productions are in a huge % american media, national
| media for some ~40million population country, limits itself
| to talkshows, entertainment world, sports and so.. not
| movies, series or sitcoms
| crooked-v wrote:
| The context you're missing here is that "Black culture" in the
| U.S. really means "a blend of many African cultures of only
| poorly-known detail, plus a dose of some parts of western
| European culture, as heavily mediated by slavery and
| discrimination". It's associated with skin color most
| predominantly because that's the connecting factor for most
| people who were stripped of their original cultures and forced
| into slavery.
| asmos7 wrote:
| General Motors got strong armed by a black media group made up
| of billionaire media owners for not spending enough advertising
| dollars on TV companies owned by blacks. Make no mistake this
| kind of stuff is usually about the dollar bill more so than
| "representation".
| emodendroket wrote:
| Even if that were true, the racial disparities in income and
| especially wealth remain large. It doesn't seem untoward to
| advocate improvement there.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I think a certain geographical segment of America (coastal
| areas mainly covering NYC, LA, SF, Seattle, Miami, and a few
| others) is frequently portrayed in the media, but this segment
| of America is not actually representative, and over-represents
| itself.
| dang wrote:
| All: please don't turn a thread like this into a same-old
| flamewar about race. It's tedious, nasty, and never changes. HN
| is for _curious_ conversation, and there 's zero curiosity in
| that, obviously. If you want the sort of angry activation that
| comes from repeating the same thing over and over, please find
| some other place to do it.
|
| These guys have identified a market opportunity and are going for
| it. There are a lot of interesting aspects to discuss. If you
| don't want to do that, there are other threads to read--you don't
| need to muck this one up.
|
| As for "how is X for black people a thing" - come on you guys,
| BET was founded in 1980. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BET
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| Semaphor wrote:
| When I read "Black" on HN or Reddit, it usually refers to
| African-American blacks, do you also have (or are looking for)
| content outside that region, more specifically Africa?
|
| A suggestion: have some description of your content somewhere. At
| least logged out, I can barely see more than the episode title, I
| have no idea what any of the shows are about.
|
| In any way, I (white) think this sounds like a great idea,
| congrats on the launch and good luck.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| We do want this to be a global company. Obviously, we have to
| start somewhere, so the U.S., where we are, is a logical first
| step, but we already have content from outside of our region,
| and hope to expand that greatly in the months and years to
| come!
|
| And yes, our site needs a lot of work in terms of the meta
| data. We're working on getting that filled in across the site
| as much as possible. Hopefully, the free episodes we made
| available have their descriptions in place!
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| It seems like it will be extremely difficult to cater to the
| American Black market and assume those interests carryover to
| other populations.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| I wouldn't think of anything that we're planning to do from
| an internationalization point as being any different from
| what Netflix has done spanning across the globe and
| cultures.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Can any French, Belgians, or Dutchies with significant Black
| African sub-culture comment? I am curious: If there was a French-
| language or Flemish-/Dutch-language "Netflix for black people" in
| your country, what would be the reaction?
| tptacek wrote:
| French people of African descent are not culturally the same as
| American Black people. Black culture is unique in that it was
| created artificially by kidnapping millions of people from the
| African content and stripping them of their cultures, family
| ties, and names, prompting those people to construct a new
| culture (while uniting them for another 100 years in the
| experience of apartheid and the civil rights movement). It's
| its own powerful, interesting thing.
|
| But, of course, there are TV stations for all sorts of
| ethnicities all over the world, so the answer to your question
| is just "nobody would care except message board trolls".
| mrits wrote:
| "Black culture is unique in that it was created artificially
| by kidnapping millions of people from the African content and
| stripping them of their cultures, family ties, and names,
| prompting those people to construct a new culture."
|
| That certainly isn't unique.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think my point is "no other group of people has
| endured what Black people have". At any rate: I don't think
| I have much more to say about this that would be relevant
| to Uzo and Iyanu's startup, which is neat and deserves the
| attention.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I interpreted it as the culture was unique, not the way it
| evolved, but re-reading it, I can see how you interpreted
| it that way, too,
| mrits wrote:
| "in that" is an english phrase that when used means
| exactly how I interrupted it
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's
| tedious and nasty.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mrits wrote:
| A lot of people here don't speak english as a first
| language.
|
| Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Black African sub-culture comment
|
| Africa is both one of the largest and one of the most populated
| continent on earth. There is no Black African subculture in
| France. There are African immigrants from many different places
| in Africa each with their own cultures and many descendants of
| immigrants with a mix of sensibilities towards the culture of
| their parents places of origin.
|
| As a French, the idea that you could have a "Netflix for black
| people" in France slightly insulting but our culture is
| extremely different from the American one. We used to have a
| channel dedicated to the cultures of French oversea territories
| but it was stopped as it wasn't doing very well.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| In France blacks don't really have a different culture, except
| when they carry their own from their country of origin,
| sometimes passed into french-born blacks. It's not like in the
| US where (it seems) there's a clear black-american culture with
| visible boundaries.
|
| Blacks of different origin also have different cultures.
|
| I mean, if one tried to start up a netflix for blacks in an
| european context, with the same leiv motiv as this one
| (political) it would be very difficult as different blacks come
| from different backgrounds.
|
| They surely share stuff, to a same degree one would say white
| europeans share stuff too.
|
| Also, I haven't discussed this issue with black people, but my
| gut feel given their reaction to other stuff is that the
| suggestion that they have a "different culture" to the country
| they live in may even be offensive to them.
|
| Since the american worldview is always trying to get influence
| through media and the internet, this may be changing with newer
| generations.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The US is a somewhat unique case because of (of course)
| slavery, and in particular how long it lasted and how
| difficult it was to eradicate the last vestiges of explicit
| or implicit slavery. (People were still being treated as de
| facto slaves into the 1960s, for example:
| https://www.livescience.com/61886-modern-slavery-united-
| stat...)
|
| In most other countries, including other countries that
| practiced slavery, either more of the original cultural of
| Black residents remains intact, or there's been more time
| post-slavery for a united-by-slavery monoculture to more
| visibly break up into smaller subcultures, or both.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| There has to be more, because in Europe, and particularly
| in southern europe there has been slavery for thousends of
| years. Everyone has been slave to everyone, like a free for
| all.
|
| Yet there's no one making claims based on that, and I'm not
| aware that such claims existed in the past neither. People
| just accepted as a fact of life and moved on.
|
| If you look at how all the relations played out between
| southern europe, the Ottoman empire and northen africa in
| general, you'll see this isn't from so distant past.
| pyb wrote:
| You may find further comments here :
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903503 ("Afrostream (YC
| S15) Is Netflix for African and African-American Movies")
| neartheplain wrote:
| In America, I'd expect "Black African sub-culture" to mean the
| culture of recently-arrived immigrants from Africa. That's a
| very different thing from black American culture, which evolved
| under an entirely different set of conditions over the last few
| centuries. Significant differences exist between native-born
| black Americans and recent African immigrants in terms of
| median income, educational attainment, family structure, and
| mainstream cultural assimilation. CNN wrote an account of these
| differences in 2009 which I couldn't imagine them publishing
| today:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/14/africans.in.america/index....
|
| >Ezeamuzie recalled finding himself more confused by his
| experience with some African-Americans: Why were they so
| cliquish? Why did they mock students for being intelligent? Why
| were they homophobic and bent on using the n-word? Why did
| every conversation seem to involve drugs, girls or materialism?
| secondcoming wrote:
| Black Entertainment Television[0] exists, I don't know about US
| TV, but UK TV has lots of other Black-oriented channels.
|
| How do they fail to meet the standards you've set for yourself?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BET
| sokoloff wrote:
| Best of luck in your endeavor. I don't personally have the guts
| to take on a space where it seems to me like Netflix could
| _decide_ to squash you at any moment by outbidding for the
| catalog of work by other creators.
|
| I wonder to what extent that was also true with BET, which is an
| obviously extremely successful outcome. (Maybe I'm just chicken.)
|
| Again, best of luck; this seems like a really smart idea and has
| a team that's got very relevant experience on at least the tech
| side of the house.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Yeah, the Netflix squashing us is certainly something we've
| thought through. We think there are 2 reasons we've got a good
| chance here though.
|
| One, Netflix has to worry about competing with a lot of other
| major players, while also being profitable going forward, so
| they really can't over-spend on an audience that is likely
| underrepresented among their customer base relative to the
| global population.
|
| And two, we think focus is big. Serving just one audience means
| we can do more things with content and product that Netflix
| couldn't do because black people are a small percentage of
| their base (not to mention the possible alienation as evidenced
| by this thread). Media is probably the industry where serving
| "niches" has proven the most worthwhile. We hope to follow in
| that trend!
| [deleted]
| swman wrote:
| I'm a brown guy and I have fond memories of watching the
| Cosby show with my parents as a kid. I was saddened and
| disappointed to learn of Cosby's horrific behavior later on,
| and it sucks that the show is now going to be lost because of
| the main characters real life persona.
|
| Really would love a modern day family show that is relatable
| and shows a successful family. Not too far fetched, but real
| like the set of Cosby show with the kitchen room and living
| room was relatable to me. Before moving to America my family
| with 5+ people lives in two rooms that were like 12x12. I've
| tried watching shows like Modern Family and they just don't
| really carry the same weight IMO. Too rich or fake seeming.
|
| Good luck
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| A lawyer and doctor having time to raise 5 kids spanning 20
| years in age in a house in NYC seems ridiculous to me too.
| swman wrote:
| Sure, and I'd argue modern family is even less relatable.
| For an immigrant family like mine, it was nice to see a
| successful family that still has to deal with issues and
| how they overcome them.
| neartheplain wrote:
| BET was a financial success for investors, but was it a success
| for the black community? Depends who you ask. I lean towards
| The Boondocks' take:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZchP89w2pJo
| [deleted]
| jxramos wrote:
| I never contemplated that before, just watched the clip, and
| saw this comment. I haven't watched BET in a few decades, I'm
| curious now what the recent material is like. You know any
| representative shows on that network that would correspond to
| folks dissatisfaction with the goods?
|
| > Deshawn Brown 1 year ago If you think about.. Huey is
| actually right. Im black. And i think bet only breeds
| arrogance and ignorance.
| pierre wrote:
| Congrats on the launch, but you are attacking a difficult market,
| with a strong 'political' risk/factor as we can see in this
| thread. If I remember correctly there was a similar startup in YC
| S15 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9903229) that shutdown
| 2 years after (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15292534,
| https://techpoint.africa/2017/09/22/afrostream-shut-down/).
|
| In streaming content is king and over priced this day due to the
| ongoing war between Netflix / Disney / Amazon / Hulu ... and if
| you read through Afrostream postmortem, the main issue is that
| new subscribers consume all the content relevant to them in three
| month (so you always have to acquire more content). I read that
| you plan to commission indie content, but how do you plan you be
| able to keep up? Will you focus more on content that is fast /
| cheap to product : live shows / reality TV, or do you have an
| other idea in mind?
|
| An unsolicited advice : If I was in your shoes, I would look at
| how to use deepfake to transform some content to fit your
| platform. For example, by trying to change some old cartoons,
| where licensing cost can be reduce, to match your niche taste.
| This will put you in a good position for the future of content
| war, if it ever go the way of fully generated content.
| Uzo0312 wrote:
| Yes! We've talked with that founder, and he certainly let us
| know it's a hard business. I think the important thing for us
| to find an audience for the content we're starting with. We
| identified a niche within black audiences that we think is
| particularly underserved, and we're trying to meet their
| demand. If we can get them, it gets us to a pretty decent
| level, and with that MRR, we can move into another niche, and
| then another, and then another...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Deep faking art is extremely unlikely to work. There is a world
| of difference between "I can make this look like an original
| work" and "I can make this good art"
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > you are attacking a difficult market ... there was a similar
| startup in YC S15 ... that shutdown 2 years after ...
|
| That applies to almost every startup ever. I expect that every
| founder can report hearing similar feedback.
|
| I did omit one factor that differentiates this startup, but
| every startup has extra risks particular to it.
| bishoprook2 wrote:
| Crikey. This gives me a great idea.
|
| BoomerFlix.
|
| What better market to target if you want to make a few coins?
|
| Who's in?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > BoomerFlix
|
| I'm not actually a "boomer" (I'm too young), but my kids call
| me one anyway. But I'm a little surprised that there's no
| streaming service that includes nothing but old 60's/70's/80's
| movies whose rights could almost certainly be obtained cheap,
| and not even bother with more recent movies.
| bishoprook2 wrote:
| I'm absolutely serious here (with the canonical HN downvotes
| and everything).
|
| It's easy to imagine. Movies from (especially) the
| 1960s/1970s. Lost In Space. Unscoped airchecks (with fees
| paid of course).
| [deleted]
| heyflyguy wrote:
| This feels like racism.
| goldenkey wrote:
| How is this not racist?
| pl0x wrote:
| The question must be asked if YC is funding companies based on
| race then if I created the Netflix for Nigerians where I am from,
| will they fund me? How do they decide which ethnic group to fund
| at YC? As a Nigerian this screams of racial profiling, we see our
| selves as Nigerian first and not black.
| ntmathrow wrote:
| Someone asked this:
|
| > Wonder which certain long-nosed tribal "people" funded this
| one...
|
| But I couldn't reply to it since it was flagged. The answer is
| Techstars Music, owned by Techstars which is founded by David
| Cohen
|
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/black-oak-tv/company...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| What's the advantage of a new service targeting black people as
| opposed to targeted content from Netflix? Netflix already infers
| what type of content you like _and_ has a far greater content
| budget (or percentage of a content budget they can devote to
| this) than you can raise.
|
| It's not like BET, where there is a clear advantage to having a
| channel with black oriented content. It feels more like a
| different cable provider.
|
| If you were trying to make a YouTube competitor, I would
| understand that. User-generated content doesn't seem as solved as
| top-down development.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| Really interesting and radical idea. Having content specifically
| for a black audience seems so controversial at first but could be
| a great way to include black people more in pop culture. I think
| there is definitely demand for this: both from producers and
| viewers. If such a service existed it may even help cross-
| cultural knowledge sharing.
|
| I read a good comment here from a netflix employee about the
| technical challenges. DRM seems like its going to be a bitch.
| Would be a cool startup to work for though
| mrits wrote:
| Netflix is already Netflix for black people.
| rvz wrote:
| Sort of.
|
| Wait until they find out about Nollywood movies or TV shows
| which is also available on Netflix.
|
| I find that the Nollywood producers seem to be having a good
| time exporting their culture and making themselves relevant as
| far as possible with the success of several Nollywood actors
| that have become memes themselves with a huge following.
|
| That's what the viewers want to see, not more stories of some
| recent fraudulent political movements.
| newsclues wrote:
| I find segregation to be gross.
|
| When will hacker news fork into racially segregated communities?
| bawana wrote:
| when does a headline imply a derogatory connotation? would
| another racial url be as inflammatory? http://beta.rican.tv
|
| would a religious or political headline carry the same explosive
| implications? http://beta.christiancrusader.tv http://beta.jew.tv
| [deleted]
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