Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has accused Netflix of “spying” on users, including children, without their consent, while selling their data to commercial data brokers and advertising technology companies. The State of Texas has filed a lawsuit against the streaming giant, claiming that Netflix has taken unfair advantage of its users.
Texas Attorney General files lawsuit against Netflix
On May 11, Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Netflix on behalf of the State of Texas for a host of alleged offenses, including what a press release refers to as “spying” on children.
In a press release from the Attorney General’s office, Paxton and his team claim that the streaming company “records and monetizes billions of behavioral events.” The lawsuit accuses Netflix of lying to its customers about not collecting their data, while the company gathers information on its users to then sell it.
“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,” the statement from the Attorney General’s office read.
In the lawsuit, Paxton’s team also accuses Netflix of engineering its platform to be addictive. Using its autoplay feature as an example, the suit claims that the company uses specific features to “manipulate users to take actions Netflix wants them to take.”
“Netflix has built a surveillance program designed to illegally collect and profit from Texans’ personal data without their consent, and my office will do everything in our power to stop it,” Paxton remarked in an official statement. “Netflix is not the ad-free and kid-friendly platform it claims to be. Instead, it has misled consumers while exploiting their private data to make billions. I will continue to work to protect Texas families from deceptive practices by Big Tech companies and ensure that corporations are held accountable under Texas law.”
The lawsuit has charged Netflix with violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and seeks to restrict the organization from collecting any more user data. It also demands that Netflix disable its autoplay by default feature in children’s profiles and pay civil fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
