10 Controversies Netflix Wants You To Forget

Netflix is big. Like, so big that a writer sounds like a 90s valley girl when trying to describe how big it totally is. This is a service that didn't just follow the trends of the streaming era, it helped to define them, changing the way people access and consume media across the world.

First building a huge back-catalog of shows from across the world, they spread to different regions, then started work on their own original content. While they've been losing ground in recent years as already big media players join them in the streaming market, Netflix is still the household name for streaming services. You don't hear about anyone Amazon Prime Video & Chill-ing, after all. It's Netflix & Chill, or Netflix & Be Cold With Each Other if you're an older couple.

But one can't get this big without taking some risks and making some mistakes, and Netflix are no stranger to this. Controversy and scandal have followed Netflix from its origins as a DVD (for younger readers, a DVD is like a bagel but you can't eat it and it contains a movie) rental service.

Here's 10 scandals, boycotts, and controversies Netflix hoping you don't remember well.

Atypical was always going to be a challenge. A sitcom centring on a main character with high-functioning autism, it was never going to give a full picture of the condition as there are simply too many variables on the spectrum to put into one character. Still, so long as they handled their subject matter delicately, then it surely could have made a strong case for representation.

Sadly reviewers, many of whom claimed to be on the autism spectrum themselves, slated the show. Sam Gardner, the main character, was claimed to be an offensive stereotype.

Meanwhile, the shows writing was brought to task for how easily it leaned into the stereotypes surrounding autism in order to get cheap laughs, while offering nothing particularly insightful for viewers to understand autism that little bit more. Even worse, so many of the autistic responses in the show aren't classic signs at all, instead being creepy and violent actions that paint Sam as an emerging monster.

When it came to light that Robia Rashid and her writing team hadn't bothered to consult any actual autistic people in their research, the backlash was immediate with many boycotting the show's future seasons unless that changed.