Netflix employees go out of work

About 100 people protested near the headquarters of <a class="tvreplink" target="_blank" href="https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=Nasdaq%3ANFLX">Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) on Wednesday against the streaming pioneer's decision to release comedian Dave Chappelle's new special that they thought ridiculed transgender people.

Netflix employees, transgender rights advocates, and officials gathered on a sidewalk outside a Netflix office just blocks from the company's 13-story headquarters on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The protesters carried signs that read "Trans Lives Matter" and "Team Trans" and chanted slogans such as "What do we want? Accountability," "When do we want it? Now."

Netflix employees outnumbered citizens, but the exact number was not clear. The Netflix employees had called for a work stoppage.

Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos admitted in interviews before the work stoppage that "I screwed it up" talking to Netflix staff about Chappelle's special "The Closer".

Sarandos had previously defended the decision to broadcast the program on the grounds that Chappelle's language did not cross the line of incitement to violence. Netflix saw record numbers of subscribers on Tuesday,

"While we appreciate Chappelle admitting the bug, let's speak in his own words about what this fix looks like," said Ashlee Marie Preston, a transgender activist who came out in support of Netflix staff .

Joey Soloway, the creator of "Transparent", a now discontinued streaming series by competitor Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), in which a transgender figure appears, spoke about the line between edgy jokes and harmful remarks.

"People ask me as a comedian where the line is," said Soloway. "The limit is all that makes it worse."

Not everyone supported this message. "The idea that an angry little mob can influence the conversation and silence people's speech is terrifying," said counter-protester Dick Masterson.

While employee protests against corporate policy in Silicon Valley are now common, this is likely to be the first such action by the pioneer of video streaming services.

The controversy over "The Closer" takes place against the backdrop of a company-wide diversity effort that began in 2018 after the former head of communications at Netflix was fired for using a racist epithet in company meetings.

"It doesn't feel good to have worked for the company that published this," wrote Netflix software engineer Terra Field in a medium post, referring to "The Closer." "Especially when we've spent years shaping the company's policies and services to be a great place to work for trans people."