Netflix reportedly suppressed Cuties from its search result to minimize public backlash
The streamer gamed its own algorithm to keep Maïmouna Doucouré’s controversial film from appearing on certain search pages

The controversy surrounding Maïmouna Doucouré’s Mignonnes/Cuties—a film designed to question and criticize a culture that endlessly sexualizes female children, and which was then accused, by people who had never watched it, of instead participating in and celebrating said culture—is likely to be a landmark one for Netflix. More than a year after the Sundance award winner’s (ultimately very quiet) release—and while Netflix faces a new backlash for its full-throated support of transphobic material in Dave Chappelle’s The Closer—the movie still gets brought up in conversations about criticisms of the streaming giant, and its reactions to those critiques.
A new piece from The Verge this week dialed into those reactions, citing documents outlining the ways that Netflix did everything it could to invisibly distance itself from Cuties, without being seen to back down from supporting the film’s release.