Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Monday against Netflix, alleging the streaming service illegally collected data from children and consumers without consent and designed its platform to be addictive.
The complaint, filed in Collin County state court, accuses the Los Gatos, California-based company of misrepresenting its data practices to consumers for years, Reuters reported.
According to the lawsuit, Netflix tracked and sold viewers’ habits and preferences to data brokers and advertising companies, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue.
Paxton’s office took aim at what the complaint calls “dark patterns” engineered to keep users watching. The lawsuit specifically cites the autoplay feature that immediately begins a new show after another ends.
“Netflix’s endgame is simple and lucrative: get children and families glued to the screen, harvest their data while they are stuck there, and then monetize the data for a handsome profit,” the complaint stated.
“When you watch Netflix, Netflix watches you.”
The lawsuit references Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive at the time, who said in 2020, “we don’t collect anything,” as he attempted to distinguish the company from competitors like Amazon, Facebook and Google on data practices.
Paxton alleges the streaming service’s surveillance violates the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. His office is seeking to force Netflix to delete all illegally collected data and cease using such information for targeted advertising without user consent. Texas is also pursuing civil fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
The legal action reflects a broader trend of lawsuits targeting online businesses and social media companies for tracking users and selling data to third parties for advertising purposes.
The lawsuit comes as Paxton, a Republican, is currently running for U.S. Senate against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
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