WIRED25: Netflix’s Reed Hastings on Broadening Your Horizons

Thanks to Covid-19, the mantra for 2020 has got to be “quarantine and chill.” Good thing Netflix is here to “entertain people all over the world,” as the company’s cofounder Reed Hastings explained at this year’s WIRED25.

Sating the global entertainment palate, though, requires an undying spirit of invention as well as narratives that span both the US and abroad. Netflix’s secret, according to Hasting’s new book No Rules Rules, is that it values its workers over its work process. It’s this employee-centric attitude that allows a startup to maintain a culture of innovation as it grows from, say, a 30-person rent-by-mail DVD provider into the world’s largest streaming service, with a film production arm that rivals Hollywood’s Big Six.

The service offers movies and TV shows made in Spain, Germany, Japan, Korea, the UK, Brazil, and more, providing lockdowners with stories from everywhere to everyone. “If you’re a globalist, like I am,” Hastings said in an interview with WIRED editor-in-chief Nick Thompson, “you want to knit the world together and you want people to understand, respect, love, and appreciate each other. And entertainment is a key part of how that happens.” And during a time of rampant nationalism, if culture is the antidote to bigotry, stream on!

Hastings’ globalist ethos, however, doesn’t translate to tracking your travel plans for better binge-worthy recommendations. So while the occasional Korean flick might pop up as its deep learning algorithm “probes the edge” to broaden your artistic horizons, it’s not snooping on you to see if you recently took a trip to South Korea. The point is variety, not data abuse.

“Nobody wants a film just like the one you watched last night,” Hastings told Thompson. “We want something that’s different, that’s fresh.”