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Pride Month Gets a Quieter Reception From Streaming Platforms This Year

Members of Netflix’s hit show Heartstopper during the “Pride in London” festival in 2023. Getty Images for Pride In London

In past years, major streaming services marked the arrival of Pride Month with events like concerts and art installations to spotlight LGBTQ+ voices. In 2023, for example, Hulu transformed New York’s High Line with floral sculptures as part of its “Pride Never Stops” campaign. The following year, HBO Max hosted virtual and in-person screenings of LGBTQ+ titles, alongside other Pride-themed initiatives. As the first week of Pride Month 2025 draws to a close, however, it feels a little like that once-vibrant corporate support has dimmed. With a few exceptions, major streamers so far have limited their engagement to modest content collections and a scattering of social media posts.

As of this writing, only Netflix, Apple TV++ and HBO Max have posted about Pride on X or Instagram. Meanwhile, in-app promotion of LGBTQ+ content varies widely. Hulu and Peacock both feature dedicated Pride collections on their homepages. Hulu, for instance, has placed a banner near the top of its app that reads: “Hulu has Pride. Watch your LGBTQ+ faves now.”

Netflix, the largest streaming service in the world by subscriber count (more than 301 million as of the end of 2024), has a Pride-themed collection of content in the app. The streamer’s “@Most” accounts on X and Instagram — which are separate from the main “@Netflix” account—are celebrating the month via a “Pride Syllabus” series that guides the platform’s LGBTQ+ audience through Netflix content that ties back to and reflects curated themes in queer culture. 

The “syllabus” kicked off on June 1 with a number of playful “Happy Pride” style posts that have already seen engagement from talent like Trixie Mattel, Benny Skinner and Hunter Doohan.

Other platforms have taken a quieter approach. Some Pride collections are buried within app menus, surfaced only by algorithms or missing entirely. It’s a shift that one could argue reflects broader recalibrations in how corporations approach diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)— particularly under the renewed scrutiny of the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump, who has made rolling back DEI efforts a priority, does not plan to issue a proclamation recognizing June as Pride Month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during a briefing on Tuesday (June 3).

Axios reports that services like Paramount+ and Tubi say they still intend to post on social media about Pride, but an overall decline in streaming-wide visibility is clear. The pullback among streamers also aligns with a trend across Corporate America: a recent survey by Gravity Research found that 39 percent of business executives—including leaders of Fortune 500 companies—say their companies are scaling back Pride-related efforts this year, which includes anything from event sponsorships to branded social campaigns. 

Polling also suggests this shift might not actually be surprising to LGBTQ+ audiences. A recent Pew Research survey found that nearly 70 percent of LGBTQ adults believe most companies promote Pride Month more out of business interest than genuine support.

To be sure, many platforms continue to offer queer-themed titles year-round. Services like HBO Max, Netflix and Prime Video maintain collections that highlight LGBTQ+ stories and characters. However, these folders are often tucked inside navigation menus or triggered only by past user behavior. In effect, unless a viewer has already been engaging with LGBTQ+ content, they may not see any sign of Pride Month in the app at all.

Here’s a look at where things currently stand across major streaming platforms (as of the first week of June):

  • HBO Max has posted about Pride on X and Instagram and features an “LGBTQ+ Voices” collection in the app.
  • Netflix has posted about the month on X and Instagram, and includes Pride-themed content inside the app.
  • Paramount+ has a “Mountain of Pride” collection but has not yet posted on social.
  • Apple TV+ has posted on X and Instagram but does not feature any Pride-themed collection in its app.
  • Disney+ is showcasing a Pride collection in the carousel at the top of its main screen.
  • Peacock includes a “Celebrating Pride Month” row of content and has posted on Instagram.
  • Hulu is promoting Pride with a homepage banner and collection titled “Hulu has Pride.”
  • Prime Video has neither posted on social nor highlighted Pride-themed content in the app.



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Reddit’s Treasure Trove of ‘Human’ Data Sparks Tension with A.I. Companies

Steve Huffman co-founded Reddit two decades ago. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Reddit, the popular social media platform known for its decades of topic-specific forums, holds a treasure trove of user-generated content that A.I. companies can use to train large language models. But the platform doesn’t take kindly to having its data used without permission. In a lawsuit filed yesterday (June 4), Reddit accused A.I. company Anthropic of scraping its site’s content without authorization. Describing Anthropic as a company that “bills itself as the white knight of the A.I. industry,” Reddit’s court filings argued that the startup is “anything but.”

Reddit’s archives, which span two decades of online discussions, make the site an especially valuable resource for human-generated text. This type of content is increasingly sought after by tech companies as their data pools—necessary for training A.I. models—begin to dwindle.

“Reddit’s vast corpus of public content has enormous utility, including as a potential source of inputs for training emerging large language A.I. technologies, like Anthropic’s Claude offering, and assisting A.I. technologies in generating answers to user queries,” said Reddit in the suit.

Reddit accuses Anthropic of using Reddit users’ personal data to train its Claude models without obtaining consent. Reddit claims this violates user agreements that prohibit the commercial exploitation of its content without prior authorization.

While Anthropic claimed in July 2023 that it had blocked Reddit from its web crawlers, Reddit’s audit logs show that the A.I. company accessed its data more than 100,000 times using automated bots in the months that followed. The lawsuit also referenced a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which highlighted Reddit’s subreddits as a valuable source of high-quality training data.

“We disagree with Reddit’s claims and will defend ourselves vigorously,” said an Anthropic spokesperson in a statement.

Reddit has formal licensing agreements with some of Anthropic’s competitors, including OpenAI and Google. Reddit executives have previously said the platform is selective when approaching licensing partners, particularly for large-scale training agreements. The company’s vast collection of authentic, unique conversations on “every topic imaginable” has made it a prized asset in the A.I. era, according to CEO Steve Huffman during a quarterly earnings call last year. “The paradox I see is that as more content on the internet is written by machines, there’s an increasing premium on content that comes from real people,” he noted.

On the company’s most recent earnings call last month, Huffman said “authentic content from humans” is Reddit’s primary value proposition.

Co-founded by Huffman and his college roommate Alexis Ohanian in 2005, Reddit has more than 100 million daily active users who use the platform’s subreddits to ask questions, provide tips and share perspectives on various subjects. The company went public last year and currently has a market capitalization of $21.8 billion.



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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Explains How the Social Platform Thrives Without Ads

Jay Graber, head of Bluesky, pictured at Web Summit Vancouver 2025 on May 27. Sam Barnes/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images

Bluesky, the social networking platform gaining traction as a popular alternative to X, is positioning itself as a hub for personalized—and often niche—online communities. According to CEO Jay Graber, that same focus on customization is what allows Bluesky users to escape the echo chambers that dominate traditional social media.

“You can really just silo in the corner you want to be in,” said Graber during a talk at Web Summit Vancouver yesterday (May 27). Still, features like custom feeds and Bluesky starter packs—which curate lists of users centered on specific interests—can also encourage users to branch out. Graber noted she’s explored communities centered around fountain pens, medical studies, and even commodities trading.

Bluesky users have the option to build timelines that are entirely randomized or intentionally filled with perspectives different from their own. In one instance, an early adopter experimented by randomly sorting users into teams and creating separate feeds to showcase posts from each group, Graber said.

How a site with 35 million users is run by just 25 people

Despite its rapid expansion, Bluesky operates with a lean team of just 25 employees, who manage the demands of a budding social media platform in part through strategic delegation. Earlier this year, the company launched a verification system for notable accounts—but it also introduced a “Trusted Verifier” program, enabling approved organizations such as The New York Times and Wired to verify users themselves. “You can have a system that builds more points of trust than just the one that we hold as a company,” said Graber.

Another key difference setting Bluesky apart from its competitors is its stance against traditional advertising. Instead, the company plans to monetize through a marketplace of related services and, eventually, user subscriptions. Its decentralized, open-source structure—which allows users to take their data with them or build parallel networks if dissatisfied—serves as a built-in safeguard against the kind of profit-first decisions, like ad-based models, that Graber said run counter to the company’s mission.

According to Graber, this approach mirrors the open structure of the web itself, where users can install ad blockers or switch search engines whenever they choose. “Creating these constraints for ourselves at the beginning means that we get more creative about how we’re approaching this problem,” she said.



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Unpacking British Shows’ Enduring Appeal to American Audiences

Bridgerton was the most-watched streaming original in the U.S. for 2024. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2022

How does a British four-episode limited series not based on any pre-existing intellectual property, with no aliens, magical sorcerers or action sequences become one of Netflix’s most popular shows ever? March’s Adolescence—which follows a family after their young son is arrested for the murder of a classmate—did exactly that, landing behind only Stranger Things and Wednesday despite the absence of any marketable stars (with all due respect to Stephen Graham’s talent) or franchise recognition. 

While the U.S. is famously the largest exporter of entertainment, the U.K. follows closely behind. Streaming has globalized audience tastes, with certain British imports consistently capturing American attention. 

Let’s explore how the U.K. funnels top-tier programming to the U.S. and identify the genres and formats that keep wrangling American hearts and minds. 

British TV and film premieres have more than doubled between 2020 and 2024, according to media research firm Parrot Analytics. Yet this surge primarily rode the wave of the early streaming boom which enjoyed a full-force money hose of resources that have since been pulled back a bit. 

From 2018-2024, the supply of British TV series and films outweighs the audience demand for such content in the US, per Parrot. This suggests investment could be slightly pulled back. The average annual American audience demand share for British TV (5.6 percent) and film (6.7 percent) has remained steady in that span, proving the enduring appeal of British storytelling, acting talent and production quality. But there are specific styles that boast more breakout potential in the U.S. than others.

Scripted dramas and thrillers

We Americans love juicy drama dripping in titillating thrills (and, yes, I’ve appointed myself spokesman for all Americans here). Our content preferences follow suit, particularly with historical and suspense-driven dramas. 

Netflix’s British romantic romp Bridgerton (which debuted its third season last year) claimed the title of the most-watched streaming original in the U.S. for 2024, according to Nielsen. Older series still remained relevant to U.S. audiences, too. Peaky Blinders (gangster drama) and Downton Abbey (period family drama) were both among the top 15 most in-demand U.K. series in the U.S. last year, per Parrot. 

Long-running sci-fi series such as Doctor Who (an optimistic time-and-space galavanting adventure show) and Black Mirror (a bleak dystopian exploration of humanity’s abuse and over-reliance on technology) both maintained high demand. Crime drama Fool Me Once ranked as one of the most-watched U.K. shows on Netflix last year globally, according to the streamer’s engagement reports and FlixPatrol, and the seventh most-watched streaming original in the U.S., per Nielsen.

Clearly, we’ve developed an affinity for British “prestige” dramas with familiar settings, historical connections, genre elements and a heaping helping of quality intrigue. 

Reality and competition formats

Unscripted programming serves as cost-effective, laundry-folding content that ups engagement without breaking the bank. This trend continued last year with shows such as Love Island UK and The Great British Bake Off ranking among the 12 most in-demand U.K. series in America. These programs also featured in Samba TV’s Top 10 weekly streaming charts whenever new seasons launched, indicating a loyal high floor of returning viewers. 

Netflix—the Kansas City Chiefs of streaming—has strategically invested in unscripted British programming. Love Is Blind: UK pulled in a healthy 141.8 million global views in 2024. Game and panel shows contributed as well, with Paramount+’s comedy competition Taskmaster ranking fifth in demand. 

Simply put, American audiences flock to unscripted British series that combine distinctive British humor, romantic competition and gossipy goodness. We’re very simple creatures. 

Kids and family programming

Children’s animation forms an integral genre for the entertainment industry and yet another source of resonant British programming. Long-running preschool franchises such as Peppa Pig, Thomas & Friends and Little Baby Bum all ranked in the top 20 for U.K. content demand in the US. Globally, Peppa Pig generated more viewing hours than any Netflix kids series in 2024, British or otherwise, with Season 6 alone logging nearly 50 million views. Pretty good. 

It’s worth noting that Nielsen’s most-streamed show of 2024 was Australian export Bluey (Disney+), underscoring the general popularity of animated family content. When it comes to U.K. flavors, globally recognizable kids brands continue drawing young U.S. viewers. 

Quirky comedies and other formats

Brits boast a distinct sense of humor and a singular ability to blend the morbid with the joyful. This stretches deep into legacy libraries, where classic hits like Mr. Bean continue to rank highly. It also bodes well for contemporary pop culture. Recent hits such as The Gentleman (crime comedy) and Baby Reindeer (dramedy/black comedy) delivered meaningful viewership in 2024. Both series were among the five most-viewed U.K. Netflix titles globally. The Gentleman enjoyed a seven-week run on Nielsen’s U.S. streaming lists while Baby Reindeer lasted five weeks. 

Even docuseries gained traction, with Netflix’s long-running sports-doc Formula 1: Drive to Survive ranking among the 25 most-watched U.K. series globally and as a top 65 in-demand British import in the US.

Genre blends that lean on humor as well as engaging docuseries (ideally tied to major IP) can help attract U.S. engagement to British entertainment. 

Major takeaways

The U.K. market has long produced high-quality dramas, kids animation, comedies and documentaries with compelling narratives and strong characters. Recent breakout series have demonstrated a unique ability to remix familiar intellectual property, revisit historical time periods with striking creativity, or deliver achingly human stories that are simply outstanding.

Scripted series like Sherlock, Peaky Blinders, The Crown, Fleabag, Doctor Who and Downton Abbey, alongside winning recyclable unscripted formats like Love Island and Love Is Blind: UK, provide roadmaps for other markets hoping to develop and deliver globally resonant programming. Adolescence perfectly exemplifies how quality and innovation collide to produce huge results. 



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Dropping HBO Was a Mistake, and Warner Bros. Discovery Isn’t Afraid of Admitting It

Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO, HBO and Max Content speaks onstage during Warner Bros. Discovery’s 2025 Upfront Presentation on May 14, 2025 in New York City. Getty Images for Warner Bros. Di

The confusion is over. Warner Bros. Discovery announced this week that it would be rechristening its streaming service, Max, as HBO Max again after dropping the iconic cable brand from its name in 2022. It’s okay to laugh—the company’s social media team is certainly leaning into the absurdity of it all. But what’s important is that this shift signals larger changes in WBD’s streaming strategy as the business matures beyond its growth-and-volume-at-all-costs era. 

Say what you want about WBD CEO David Zaslav, whom the media has appointed as a public punching bag for reasons both fair and unfair. But at least he’s willing to admit his mistakes rather than chasing a sunken cost. 

“This is a smart course correction—and an admission that the first move didn’t work,” Tim Berney, CEO of VI Marketing and Branding, told Observer. “They wouldn’t go back to HBO Max unless they had to. It’s a common mistake: companies pay a premium for a strong brand, and then dump the name for ego, ‘vision’ or internal politics.” 

In 2022, HBO was dropped from the streamer’s name in hopes of branding a general entertainment service that could compete with Netflix. The move may have made sense when it was believed that the lean-back Discovery portfolio and lean-forward WBD library would boast more synergy. Now that we know that isn’t the case (Max’s global subscriber numbers hover around 122 million, while Netflix has more than 300 million members), returning to a beloved brand intertwined with blockbuster-level quality makes sense regardless of how messy the transitions have been. 

“By reinforcing HBO’s name in its streaming service globally, WBD is signaling that it wants to build long-term brand recognition based on a premium storytelling identity,” Lyric Mandell, Director of Media and Public Relations at brand development and strategy firm Moxy Company, told Observer.

Challenges ahead

The return of HBO is not without its challenges, however. The premium cable network has always been a niche but beloved brand in America. But outside of the U.S., the company spent decades licensing its content to local partners. (Max partners with Foxtel in Australia, Sky in the U.K. and Canal+ in France.) This creates a precarious give-and-take. 

“HBO is highly popular in America, but overseas, it’s not very popular,” Rafikuzzaman Khan, COO at digital marketing agency Microters Germany, told Observer. “Overseas, HBO would very likely be overshadowed by local streaming giants or even Netflix. Reviving HBO Max would confuse some overseas viewers who barely know anything about HBO.”

For WBD to fully leverage its latest rebrand, it must continue understanding its strengths and weaknesses while delivering a steady flow of high quality programming worthy of the HBO brand. Reviving the HBO name alone is not enough to reignite subscriber growth ad infinitum.

For instance, cross-company cooperation is more important than ever. WBD wisely teamed up with Disney to offer a streaming bundle that includes Disney+, Hulu and Max. The results speak for themselves—roughly 80 percent of new subscribers who signed up between July 2024 and September 2024 were still subscribed three months later, per Antenna data. This makes it the best retention-driving streaming offering in the U.S. market. It’s also a sign of how bundling can help sub-scale players compete, as long as the content libraries are complementary, not overlapping.

“This move reveals a sobering shift in the streaming landscape,” Ala Ho, founder of brand agency andhuman, said of Max’s rebranding. “Volume alone doesn’t build loyalty. Brands must mean something. WBD’s decision is an act of brand humility and cultural listening— a rare willingness to say: we misread the moment.”



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Trump’s Proposed 100% Tariff on Foreign Movies Pushes Hollywood to the Edge

The idea of a purely American-made movie is a myth. Neil Soni/Unsplash

When President Donald Trump fired off a Truth Social post over the weekend announcing his desire to impose a 100 percent tariff on all foreign-made movies, some Hollywood executives and media members rolled their eyes while others panicked. Both reactions are appropriate. The timing couldn’t be worse for an industry still desperately thrashing about for a life preserver following the Covid-19 pandemic, Wall Street’s reversal on the streaming model, dual Hollywood labor strikes and the Los Angeles wildfires.

The theatrical film industry has been particularly pummeled. Box office revenues remain stubbornly below pre-Covid levels, with global figures dropping from a record $43.3 billion in 2019 to just $30 billion last year.

Domestically, despite hopes for a bounce-back, 2025 projections hover around $9 billion, according to The Numbers—a far cry from the reliable $11 billion floor the industry enjoyed throughout the 2010s. Major studios are collectively releasing 10 to 15 fewer wide releases per year than they did before the pandemic.

All considered, Trump’s proposed tariffs are less a solution than a Hail Mary aimed at an impossible equation.

The myth of the all-American movie

The concept of a purely “American-made” film is about as blurry as a college student’s vision after a frat party. Film industry analyst Stephen Follows’ research reveals the average blockbuster is shot in 1.6 countries, with nearly a quarter of Hollywood studio productions filming at least partially in the U.K. in 2019 and nearly 20 percent in Canada.

Modern filmmaking sprawls across borders by necessity—visual effects from London, sound mixing from Toronto, financing from multiple international partners, and so on. Slapping tariffs on this intricate global ecosystem threatens to destabilize already precarious production economics.

“I’m not a lawyer, but there does seem to be a gap between how tariffs are defined in the law and what could be applied to services,” industry analyst Entertainment Strategy Guy, who recently published an analysis of the trade war’s potential impact on Hollywood, told Observer. “My rule of thumb when analyzing the current administration is: wait until something is done, not just said.”

International backlash brewing

The greater danger may lie abroad. Even before Trump’s post, China had announced plans to further restrict American films—moves that could inspire other countries to follow suit if tariff tensions escalate.

For an industry that relies heavily on overseas audiences, that spells disaster. Before Thunderbolts, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had generated 56.2 percent of its gargantuan $31 billion in global ticket sales from international markets, according to Box Office Mojo and The Numbers. Other franchises are even more overseas-dependent: Fast & Furious (74 percent), Wizarding World (70 percent), Jurassic Park (62 percent), Despicable Me (62 percent), DC (61 percent) and Shrek (60 percent) all rely on international ticket sales for the majority of their revenue. Any reduction, limitation, or slowdown in international theatrical distribution will have damaging ripple effects on an already limping film industry.

Foreign governments have several retaliatory options: increased taxes on American content, tighter quotas or demands for significantly more local-language production in exchange for market access. Europe could impose new levies on U.S. movies and streaming services, while other countries might erect higher barriers for filming approvals.

Alternative approaches

Not everyone sees tariffs as the answer. Actor Jon Voight and his manager Steven Paul have reportedly pitched Trump on expanding federal incentives for domestic production instead—supplements to existing state-level tax breaks, according to Bloomberg.

Entertainment Strategy Guy suggests another approach. “The best way would be to limit subsidies provided by different states so production can benefit from economies of scale in only one to three locations,” he said. “The problem with subsidies is they become a race to the bottom with increasingly higher subsidies provided by different countries.”

While U.S. physical production has declined in recent years, the Motion Picture Association told Bloomberg that America’s entertainment sector maintains a positive trade balance globally, exporting three times more content than it imports. American streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime rely on global audiences to justify their massive content investments.

As Hollywood executives anxiously track developments, the message is clear: in an increasingly interconnected industry where international success determines whether franchises live or die, new trade barriers could devastate studios still reeling from the arsenal of curveballs thrown their way over the last five years. For an administration concerned with American economic strength, triggering the collapse of one of the country’s most valuable export industries would be an unexpected plot twist—and not the good kind.



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