Texas AG Ken Paxton Sues Netflix for ‘Spying’ on Customers and Allegedly Ripping Off Their Data Without Consent

(Photos via: Julio Cortez and Michael Yanow)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued Netflix on Monday for allegedly “spying on Texans, including children, and collecting users’ data without their knowledge or consent.”

Paxton alleged the streaming giant violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act by lying about collecting subscriber data.

His lawsuit pointed to comments made by Netflix co-founder and former CEO Reed Hastings, a fierce Trump critic, in 2020 where he said the company is not “integrating everybody’s data”; the lawsuit said Hastings double down soon after and vowed “we don’t collect anything” — something Paxton said he did to save the company from scrutiny other tech companies like Meta and Apple faced.

That was all bogus, Paxton claimed. His press release on Monday said Netflix has used “intentional engineering to track and log users’ viewing habits, preferences, devices, household networks, application usage, and other sensitive behavioral data. Every interaction on the platform became a data point revealing information about the user. This tracking applied to not only adults’ accounts, but also kids’ profiles.”

Netflix then sold that information to data brokers and advertisers, Paxton claimed. The company first offered a cheaper subscription that included ads in late 2022.

“In short, Netflix sold subscriptions to its programming as an escape from Big Tech surveillance: pay monthly, avoid tracking. Texans trusted that bargain. Netflix broke it— constructing the very data-collection system subscribers paid to escape.”

His lawsuit claimed Texans contribute $1.5 billion in annual revenue to Netflix, which is valued at $360 billion. Paxton said the state is entitled to up to $10,000 for each violation of its DTPA law.

Paxton previously criticized Netflix in 2020 over the film Cuties. The AG said it was “fodder for those with criminal imaginations, serving to normalize the view that children are sexual beings.”

He added that it “whets the appetites of those who wish to harm our children in the most unimaginable ways,” and called for the platform to remove the movie.

You can read the full lawsuit by clicking here.

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