{"id":288567,"date":"2026-05-11T22:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/288567\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T22:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:05:16","slug":"netflix-sued-by-texas-senate-candidate-who-alleges-it-harvested-kids-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/288567\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix Sued By\u00a0 Texas Senate Candidate Who Alleges It Harvested Kids’ Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMAGA sure love some Netflix<\/a>, at least when it comes to kickin\u2019 the streamer\u2019s butt around for political gain. <\/p>\n

\n\tWith 15 days to go before what looks to be a tight GOP primary vote on who will carry the Republican banner into the fall against Democrat James Talarico for a potentially hotly contested Senate seat, Texas<\/a> state Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a> today threw raw red meat to the base with a scorcher of a lawsuit against Netflix. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNetflix\u2019s 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,\u201d the potentially multi-million suit says. \u201cNetflix quietly built a behavioral-surveillance program of staggering scale. At bottom, this program requires getting Texans and their children glued to the screen and then extracting every possible piece of data about them while they are there,\u201d the jury trial seeking injunction petition filed today in court<\/a> in the second largest state in the union goes on to say. <\/p>\n

\n\tTossing around terms like \u201cbait and switch,\u201d \u201clogging company, and \u201cdeceptive conduct\u201d amidst\u00a0accusations of bad faith on the part of the Ted Sarandos<\/a> and Greg Peters-run entertainment giant, Paxton, who has a tiny lead over fifth term seeking incumbent Senator John Cornyn, certainly aims to be a straight shooter \u2013 for what\u2019s it\u2019s worth. <\/p>\n

\n\tCiting repeated violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (with penalties of $10K a violation \u2014 do the math), the filing adds: \u201cTo accomplish the first goal, Netflix deceptively designs its platform to be addictive. Netflix uses dark patterns to do this discreetly. Dark patterns are subtle features engineered to manipulate users to take the actions Netflix wants them to take.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement this afternoon, Paxton\u2019s office spotlighted the lucrative bottom line of all this. \u201cNetflix users\u2019 data is essentially shopped across Big Ad Tech\u2019s shadowy network,\u201d the Lone Star AG said, emphasizing the lack of clear consent parents and children give the streamer to profiting from their info. \u201cThe company earns billions of dollars every year from secretly selling consumer data.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome may say, clutching their pearls or not, that that\u2019s just capitalism in the Digital Era and don\u2019t click Accept on the user agreement if you don\u2019t like it. Others may say it is an outrage. Either way, Netflix respectfully disagrees with the honorable gentleman from the former Republic of Texas, to put it nicely. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRespectfully to the great state of Texas and Attorney General Paxton, this lawsuit lacks merit and is based on inaccurate and distorted information,\u201d a spokesperson for the streamer said Monday of Paxton\u2019s injunction desiring barrage. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNetflix takes our members\u2019 privacy seriously and complies with privacy and data\u2011protection laws everywhere we operate,\u201d they went on to say. \u201cWe look forward to addressing the Texas Attorney General\u2019s allegations in court and further explaining our industry-leading, kid\u2011friendly parental controls and transparent privacy practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Netflix home screen (Photo:Getty)<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, while there is no apparent official connection to Heritage Foundation spinoff the Oversight Project\u2019s well-circulated Fedflix: Netflix, The Federal Government, and the New Propaganda State analysis that helped deep-six earlier this year<\/a> any GOP support for the streamer\u2019s ultimately failed $89 billion acquisition of Warner Bros <\/a>in Paxton\u2019s suit, they are certainly reading from the same hymn book, if you know what I mean? Donald Trump<\/a>\u2018s \u201cgood friends\u201d David Ellison and papa Larry Ellison eventual bought all of Warner Bros Discovery with a $111 billon bid.<\/a> To that, like the unsuccessful but headline grabbin\u2019 attack by a Texas state D.A<\/a>. on the streamer several years back over assertions that coming-of-age drama Cutie was riddled with child pornography, today\u2019s action has culture war burned into it. <\/p>\n

\n\tOutside of Netflix itself, there\u2019s also a bit of strange bedfellows here too, as much of Monday\u2019s Texas filing reads like a cut and paste of the legal actions in California and from New Mexico\u2019s state AG against Zuckerberg\u2019s Meta<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> over their practices and algorithms, as well as approach to luring the young on to their platforms and cashing in. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile appeals are already in motion or being planned in the Meta and YouTube cases in the Golden State and the Land of Enchantment, a win is still a win for prosecutors \u2014 and a win is so obviously what would-be Senator Paxton is looking for here. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt should also be noted that Trump very much put his thumb on the scale when it came to who got WBD (AKA \u2013 who will run CNN in a way POTUS likes), the ex-Apprentice host has not yet endorsed either Paxton or Cornyn before the May 26 run-off vote. MAGA loyalist Paxton may have gotten Trump\u2019s attention now, with this Netflix lawsuit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MAGA sure love some Netflix, at least when it comes to kickin\u2019 the streamer\u2019s butt around for political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145,75404,1967,5403,14409,105722,11506,3621,105723,27,29,28,105724,8802],"class_list":["post-288567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-donald-trump","tag-electionline","tag-ken-paxton","tag-meta","tag-netflix","tag-paramount-wbd","tag-paramount","tag-technology","tag-ted-sarandos","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-wbd-netflix","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}