▪️”People need to understand” typically means “I’m talking out of my ass about something I don’t understand” on social media. Instead of actually looking at Netflix’s financial statements this meme creates their own version of reality, which isn’t even close.
▪️The meme takes 292M subscribers X $20/month to get their phantom revenue, but Netflix has only 238M subscribers and most pay far less than $20/month. In Europe they avg $10.87 per subscriber, in Latin America $8.58 and just $7.66 in Asia. But you’d have to actually read their financials to know that.
https://ir.netflix.net/financials/quarterly-earnings/default.aspx
▪️Netflix had a gross revenue of $8.2B in the 2nd quarter, on track for ~$32B this year, or $2.7B/month. But they have expenses, they can’t spend all of their revenue on movie budgets. There’s so much this meme doesn’t factor in, like the cost of licensing all the movies and shows they keep on the platform, that Netflix has $14B in long-term debt and $27B in liabilities, etc.
▪️Currently, Netflix is doing well and making solid profits (which is its purpose). But it’s in an extremely competitive space, with Disney, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, NBC, etc. all vying for consumer’s limited money for streaming entertainment. Other big players like Apple are also in the mix.
▪️The notion that Netflix, or the others, don’t care if they have a 2 year hiatus of show production because “they’re billionaires” is absurd. Nearly their entire revenue stream relies on subscriptions, which would dry up quickly with no new content.
▪️They have no hold on the market and are probably aware that what Netflix did to Blockbuster could happen to them at any moment if they aren’t smart and innovative. Part of being smart in business means not thinking like this meme does.
▪️These pages have a childlike view of business, where everything is simple, money flows by the billions forever, so the only explanation for stalled contract negotiations is greedy CEOs. They know nothing of the business itself or finance, they just create a fantasy out of thin air to whirl themselves into outrage.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
