Netflix accused of changing movie posters based on ethnicity

Are you one of those people who choose which movie or series to watch on Netflix based on the image displayed by the streaming service? Know that this image, the “poster” of the movie or series, is not the same for everyone. And an American writer named Stacia L. Brown believes that the choice of this image may have to do with the ethnicity of who is accessing Netflix.

The suspicion of personalization according to ethnicity arose when Stacia saw the image from the movie “Like Father, Like Daughter”, which was shown to her. Then she asked on Twitter: “Other Black Netflix Users: Does your queue do this too? Generic posters with black cast members on them to trick you into watching them? This film stars Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer and these actors have, soooo maybe 10 minutes on screen. 20 lines between them, max.”

Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammar are white. For Stacia, the poster highlighted the actors Leonard Ouzts and Blaire Brooks, who are black and have secondary roles in the plot.

The writer went on to argue, “It’s weird trying to pass off a movie as having a black main cast (by creating a movie poster showing only black people) when it’s a white movie. An extremely white film. I already watched it last month, so I knew it was a marketing game,” she explained.

Stacia also showed that this didn’t just happen once. She shared other movie posters in which the main characters were mostly white, but which, when logging in to the streaming platform, were replaced by black actors present in the plot. “Simply Love” and “Sierra Burgess is a Loser” were among them.

The writer’s question generated a great stir on Twitter and was answered more than 120 times. Among them, one of her followers, who made it clear that she was white, showed how the same films that Stacia had selected appeared to her: with miniatures of white actors highlighted.

https://twitter.com/codetrill/status/1053192715616292864

In an official statement, international Netflix said that users, when registering to enjoy the services of the streaming platform, do not select either their skin color, or ethnicity or even gender, which makes it impossible for the company to know this information.

The only justification given by the company responsible for a huge catalog of series and films is the algorithm used to filter audiovisual products.

As explained in the Netflix Technology Blog, the streaming platform adds a history to each user of which movies and series have been watched. In this way, it is possible to select points that they have in common and that, possibly, were the attractions for the viewer to give play.

This would clarify why each show’s thumbnail is different. “The artwork can feature an actor you recognize, capture an emotional moment like a car chase, or contain a dramatic scene that conveys the essence of a movie or TV show,” the blog post explained.