Netflix has come a long way in the last decade or so - from its humble beginnings as a DVD
rental service all the way to the streaming behemoth it is today.
But that doesn't mean the company has been completely free of controversy.
Here are some of the biggest scandals to have hit Netflix to date.
There are some things you just don't do on television, no matter what kind of network
you are - and one of those things is displaying nudity by underaged actors.
Netflix's Girl is a Golden Globe nominee, but critics have attacked it for it crossing
a few serious red lines.
The film follows a transgender girl named Lara who is bullied at school and struggles
to succeed as a ballerina.
It's a tragic and quite horrible story, and if you've got a weak stomach - or even just
a heightened sense of empathy - you may want to give Girl a pass.
The scene that raised the most eyebrows was one which included a full-frontal shot of
the 15-year-old actor who portrays Lara.
Even Netflix's own censors thought the scene was just too much.
According to Decider, the Netflix version of the film was supposed to air without the
scene in question, but the film's director complained and it was eventually left in.
But was that really a victory for art, or was it unnecessarily gratuitous?
Either way, the end result was a scene which proved hugely uncomfortable.
Kevin Spacey was delightfully nasty as House of Cards' Frank Underwood, and fans really
did love watching him spearhead the show's fictionalized implosion of Washington politics.
Then, however, the truth came out about him - and now nobody cares about Frank Underwood
anymore.
Kevin Spacey was fired by Netflix because of a sexual misconduct scandal, which ended
up costing the service close to $39 million.
"And the butchery begins."
According to Reuters, the figure was related to unreleased content which Netflix decided
not to move forward with.
Netflix's decision to fire Spacey wasn't an unsurprising move, considering - as of early
2018 - the actor had more than 30 accusers, including eight who had actually worked on
House of Cards.
And it probably didn't help that, according to those accusations, the advances he made
on the show's crew were also some of the most reprehensible of all.
In this case, Netflix certainly did the right thing by letting Spacey go - regardless of
how much it ended up costing them.
It's usually considered pretty bad form to use real disaster footage in your fictional
movies and television shows, but that didn't stop Netflix from doing just that during the
making of their 2018 horror-thriller Bird Box.
Yes, you could argue that using old footage would save studios a lot of time and money
they'd otherwise have to spend either recreating a disaster on-set or with CGI.
On the other hand, anyone who has lost loved ones in a disaster shouldn't have to be surprised
when footage of their loved one's final moments shows up in a popular Netflix film.
And this wasn't some hundred-year-old disaster that has long passed out of living memory,
either - this was the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail crash in Quebec, which claimed 47 lives.
According to the BBC, Netflix used a clip from the disaster to illustrate the early,
apocalyptic scenes in the film after people began to be affected by the invisible monsters.
Granted, the clip came from a stock footage company, so there's certainly a possibility
that Netflix wasn't entirely aware of its origins.
On the other hand, it's not like they were especially quick to remove it after the truth
came out.
In fact, early complaints were met with the corporate equivalent of a half-hearted shrug,
and it was only after Canadian officials sent Netflix a highly critical open letter that
the service decided they'd better replace it with different stock footage.
It's not really clear why, in recent years, Netflix have apparently attempted to hire
Fox employees specifically.
Whatever the reason, the Hollywood Reporter says Fox wasn't exactly happy that Netflix
was poaching its employees.
In a lawsuit against the streaming giant, Fox complained:
"[Netflix ran] a brazen campaign to unlawfully target, recruit, and poach valuable Fox executives
by illegally inducing them to break their employment contracts with Fox to work at Netflix."
Fox claimed Netflix even tried to recruit two higher-level employees - a programming
executive and a marketing executive - despite knowing they had contracts with Fox.
The lawsuit is still pending as of May 2019, but Viacom has also come forward with a poaching
accusation against Netflix.
In late 2018, it claimed Netflix had also poached one of its contracted employees.
Netflix isn't taking this all lying down, though - the company has said that Fox basically
bullied its employees into taking unfair deals, which gave it the right to step in and offer
another way out.
Fox, on the other hand, accused Netflix of possessing, quote, "an actual poaching blueprint",
which lists the names of executives and the time remaining on their contracts.
The college admissions scandal of 2019 was a profound example of just how much division
there is between the haves and the have-nots of the world.
Thanks to Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman - as well as a bunch of other super-rich people
- people are now very much aware that all you need to get into a respected university
is money.
Lots and lots of money.
"We think your spending has gotten out of control."
"Give me an example."
When Huffman's name came up as one of roughly 50 individuals who bought their kids' way
into prestigious universities, the media and public reacted with fury - and when that happened,
Netflix jumped into action.
According to Business Insider, Huffman was set to appear in a film called Otherhood,
which was due to be released just a couple of weeks after Huffman pleaded guilty to her
charges related to the scandal.
The film never showed up on the streaming service, and as of May 2019, the film still
wasn't listed among Netflix's offerings.
Netflix gave the punt to Lori Loughlin, too, who was also implicated in the college entrance
scandal and was a four-season "guest star" on the series Fuller House.
A production source told TMZ that "there are currently no plans for her to return to the
fifth season," which is really just a polite way of saying they've washed their hands of
the whole affair.
Although Netflix's DVD rental service isn't really their focus anymore, back when that
was the company's main gig, they were accused of "throttling" people who were too comfortable
with their unlimited accounts.
In those days, if you had the "three DVDs a week" plan but returned your movies too
quickly, you got flagged as a heavy user.
In order to keep those heavy user accounts profitable for the service, Netflix would
delay shipments so those customers weren't receiving as many titles.
In other words, "unlimited" didn't really mean "unlimited" at all.
"But when enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything.”
But Netflix has been accused of a different kind of throttling on its streaming side,
too.
According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the company has been throttling certain customers
for years - notably those who are using the AT&T or Verizon wireless networks.
The company says it caps video streams on AT&T and Verizon at 600 kilobytes per second,
but has no such limitations set against people using Sprint or T-Mobile - because those services
don't charge fees to customers that go over their data allowances.
On the company's blog, Netflix said it "believe[s] restrictive data caps are bad for consumers
and the Internet in general."
Basically: it's not their fault.
Although Netflix's movie library isn't quite up to scratch these days, most people love
the service because it still produces some great commercial-free television - for a relatively
small subscription fee.
But what if they took the whole "commercial-free" thing out of the equation?
Imagine not only having to wait for your show to buffer, but also having to sit through
long series of endless commercials.
Understandably, it's not an attractive prospect.
So in 2015, when people heard Netflix was going to add commercials to its content, the
reaction was a little less than positive.
According to the Motley Fool, the rumor took root when Netflix began running trailers at
the end of shows and movies - meaning after you finished streaming something you'd see
a trailer for a Netflix original series.
Evidently, there were lots of people who thought this was gateway advertising, and Netflix
was just preparing everyone for what would be an eventual onslaught of commercials.
Netflix was eventually forced to release a statement to reassure customers that it wasn't
going to happen.
CEO Reed Hastings posted on Facebook:
"No advertising coming onto Netflix.
Period.
Just adding relevant cool trailers for other Netflix content you are likely to love."
Today, being "grandfathered" at Netflix usually refers to an old account that maintains its
original perks - while all the rest of the people who didn't jump on the bandwagon ten
years ago now have to pay more money for less.
According to Variety, in 2016, Netflix user George Keritsis filed a proposed class-action
lawsuit against Netflix, accusing the company of raising the price on his grandfathered
account.
Keritsis said Netflix promised his account would be $7.99 per month every month, pretty
much forever - which it was, right up until the point at which it became $9.99 a month.
The progress of the lawsuit is unclear.
The story dropped out of the news almost as quickly as it arrived, and there doesn't seem
to have been a whisper about it since.
A certain amount of embellishment of reality has to happen with just about every television
show.
Sometimes, of course, that's okay — after all, reality is pretty boring.
But sometimes it's offensive and insulting, and the people who make the shows don't seem
to know the difference.
One example of this happening is with Netflix's sitcom Atypical, which Quartz says is supposed
to be:
"...a sensitive look at the problems autistic people face in the dating scene."
Unfortunately, critics say this show just paints autistic men as stereotypically nerdy
and kind of sexist.
Because the protagonist of Atypical is autistic, he has trouble understanding social cues,
which means he's constantly misinterpreting the signals coming from everyone - especially
the opposite sex.
And because he's autistic, the audience is supposed to excuse the awful things he does
as a result of those misinterpretations, which even goes as far as physical abuse.
Sure, Atypical is a sitcom, and those kinds of shows aren't exactly renowned for their
nuanced understanding of mental health issues, but it's 2019 now - and this kind of thing
is better off left in the past.
When 13 Reasons Why debuted in 2017, it was hit with immediate criticism - largely because
it's more than just the story of family and friends having to deal with the consequences
of a loved one's death.
According to the critics, it also offers a romanticized depiction of suicide.
The story begins with the death of Hannah Baker, who has left a set of recordings behind
to let everyone in her life know just why she did what she did.
And while adults with happy and stable lives may be able to watch a series like this from
a detached perspective, this probably isn't good viewing material for anyone who is undergoing
challenges of their own, and may even be contemplating suicide.
According to Rolling Stone, 13 Reasons Why makes suicide seem like the easy way out,
and because Hannah Baker continues to exist in flashbacks, it kind of makes that act seem
less final, too.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).