The past 15 years has seen many horrific instances that shocked and outraged the citizens of the United States. From natural disasters, terrorism, war, famine to political scandals, frustrations from all branches of government and a nation divided by increasingly partisan lines. In short, we have been through a lot.
Then there are the other outrages that, quite often, seem kind of ridiculous in the larger scheme of things. Yet, these instances seem to create a huge rallying cry of rage and protest. In short, people really lose their minds when anything happens to their beloved Netflix that upsets the balance of their days-long “Cheers” binges. As many of us can recall of the Great Netflix Price Hike of 2011, many otherwise rational people began foaming at the mouth because their $10 a month bill went up to $16 for both streaming and home delivery, or $8 for just streaming. It was a dark time for home entertainment indeed.
Since that uproar, things have been fairly quiet. Netflix recovered from the fallout, mostly because not everyone who threatened to cancel their service actually went through with it. People settled down, and continued to stream a shockingly large amount of content for a pretty small sum of cash.
Then, on June 1, Twitter exploded with the news that Netflix had dared to toy with their viewing pleasure by experimenting with house ads before and after programs. Ads that promoted original content from the company, much like HBO does. Netflix has stated they are not heading into third party advertising for their service, and this was an experiment for a handful of people.
Here is a flavor of response from Netflix’s own Tweet saying they are not using third party ads:
As you can see, people were so outraged by this that they forgot to demand that Netflix carry shows they want but are not available to stream. Suffice to say, nobody is buying Netflix’s claims that the service will not be overrun by Doritos ads or whatever.
Netflix, for its part told Mashable that “We are not planning to test or implement third-party advertising on the Netflix service. For some time, we’ve teased Netflix originals with short trailers after a member finishes watching a show. Some members in a limited test now are seeing teases before a show begins. We test hundreds of potential improvements to the service every year. Many never extend beyond that.”
So there you have it. We will see where this will go, but I’m guessing Netflix will tread lightly on this seemingly insignificant front.
The JOE-DOWN 