AMAZON CALLED OUT AS ‘ANTI-TRANS’ DURING PRIDE FLAG CEREMONY:
LGBTQ groups dislike Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, who has donated millions to support gay groups and same-sex marriage campaigning for well over a
decade. So chances are, you’ll never get on the ‘Nice’ list as common folk.Just sayin’.
The rainbow-colored claws were out against Bezos yet again on Wednesday when an internal Amazon LGBTQ group (“No Hate at Amazon”) called out the company as an opponent of trans rights and safety for permitting the sale of books deemed “hurtful” toward the transgender community.
Around 30 protestors organized a “die-in” on Wednesday during the Seattle HQ’s raising of the Pride flag. The angry attendees lay on the ground during the ceremony, wrapped in trans flags to protest the alleged violence caused by permitting the “anti-trans” publications.
“Amazon does have standing policies against hate speech in its content and technically, they say we don’t sell it,” said an anonymous protestor via The Washington Post. “But we’ve obviously seen through a number of these books that that’s not the case when it comes to transphobic material.”
Amazon has been criticized for permitting books that have been deemed problematic by the trans community, including “Irreversible Damage” by Abigail Shrier and Matt Walsh’s “Johnny the Walrus.”
Eight-year Amazon senior software engineer, Lina Jodoin, quit her job as part of the outrage.
“As much as it’s about the books being for sale, for me personally, this is also very much about the response that we’ve gotten from leadership as we’ve tried to escalate,” said Jodoin.
Amazon needs to take a cue from Netflix, and steal their “Culture Memo,” and rewrite it with book-related language (or maybe expand it, and keep the existing language to cover Prime Video): Netflix Fires Major Warning Shot At Its Woke Employees With New ‘Culture Memo.’
Variety reports that the change in Netflix’s company culture appears to be in large part due to the backlash the streaming service faced from woke employees last year over its Dave Chappelle special, which the employees claimed was transphobic.
The updated Netflix Culture memo includes a new section called “Artistic Expression” that states that it will not “censor specific artists or voices” even if employees consider the content “harmful.”
“If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you,” the memo states, later adding that employees may be required to work on projects that they “perceive to be harmful” and that if they have a hard time accepting their work assignment, they might want to consider working somewhere else.
“Entertaining the world is an amazing opportunity and also a challenge because viewers have very different tastes and points of view. So we offer a wide variety of TV shows and movies, some of which can be provocative,” the new section reads, later adding, “we support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with” and that “we let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.”
Netflix reportedly fired the leader of a trans organization within the company last October who allegedly organized a walkout to protest the company backing Chappelle over his special “The Closer.”
The Verge reported:
The employee was terminated on suspicion of leaking metrics to the press related to the Dave Chappelle special. Those metrics — about how much Netflix paid for The Closer and how many people it reached — subsequently ended up in a report on Bloomberg. While the employee had shared the metrics internally, they spoke out against the leaks to colleagues, worried they might hurt the walkout movement.
The leaking of internal data is highly unusual at Netflix. While the company prides itself on transparency, employees are told that the culture can only thrive when Netflix data remains internal.
Over to you, Jeff.