Some Viewers Think Netflix Is Targeting Them by Race. Here’s What to Know.

It’s not exactly news that different Netflix users see different images when they scroll through the streaming service’s titles. In a June article from New York magazine, Todd Yellin, Netflix’s vice president of product, described how the company offered over a dozen posters — or “row art” — for its women’s wrestling series “GLOW.” One poster shows a picture of two cats fighting; another features an image of the show’s principal male lead, Marc Maron; another depicts Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin, duking it out in the ring.

But now Netflix is facing a backlash after users have claimed that in some instances, the practice amounts to racial targeting. Confused? Here’s what you need to know:

Some Netflix subscribers say the service is offering misleading visual representations of certain titles in a bid to entice viewers based on race or ethnicity. On Thursday, Stacia L. Brown, a writer and creator of the personal-essay podcast Hope Chest, posted a screenshot on Twitter of the row art for the movie “Like Father”; the image features two minor characters who are black. “Does your queue do this?” asked Brown, who is also black. “Generate posters with the Black cast members on them to try to compel you to watch?”

In response, black and white Netflix users posted different images of the same films and series, including “The Good Cop,” “Love Actually” and “Set It Up,” indicating that some white viewers were more likely to see white faces on posters while black users often saw black faces — even if those faces were not heavily featured in the film or series.

In an interview with The Guardian, the Brooklyn-based filmmaker Tobi Aremu said he felt “duped” by the images he saw. “If something is black, I take no offense in being catered to,” Aremu said. “I am black, give me black entertainment, give me more — but don’t take something that isn’t and try to present like it is.”

Netflix insists that it does not target users based on race. On Monday, a spokeswoman for Netflix shared a statement from the company noting, “Reports that we look at demographics when personalizing artwork are untrue.”

“We don’t ask members for their race, gender or ethnicity so we cannot use this information to personalize their individual Netflix experience,” the statement continues. “The only information we use is a member’s viewing history.” The spokeswoman went on to say that promotional images change regularly, and that individual members can see multiple images for the same title over time.

Netflix declined to answer questions on whether the company had plans or was considering plans to change its practices.

In a 2016 blog post on Netflix’s press website, Nick Nelson, then the company’s global manager of creative services, described a 2014 study by Netflix indicating that artwork was the biggest factor in a viewer’s decision about which Netflix title to watch.

The artwork “constituted over 82 percent of their focus while browsing Netflix,” Nelson wrote. “We also saw that users spent an average of 1.8 seconds considering each title they were presented with while on Netflix.”

In short, Netflix says it uses algorithms. In a December 2017 article on Medium, four Netflix researchers and engineers explained a bit about how it works. For example, the algorithm might conclude that a viewer who has watched several titles featuring Uma Thurman would be more likely to click on “Pulp Fiction” artwork bearing her face than on artwork bearing John Travolta’s, they wrote. A composite image in that article displayed nine different examples of row art for the series “Stranger Things.”