{"id":637286,"date":"2026-05-11T21:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T21:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/637286\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T21:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T21:22:18","slug":"netflix-sued-by-republican-texas-attorney-general-who-alleges-service-is-designed-to-be-addictive-and-is-spying-on-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/637286\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix Sued by Republican Texas Attorney General, Who Alleges Service Is Designed to Be ‘Addictive’ and Is ‘Spying’ on Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNetflix<\/a> is in the crosshairs of Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, who filed a lawsuit against the streaming giant, alleging violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Paxton\u2019s office, Netflix has been \u201cspying on Texans, including children, and collecting users\u2019 data without their knowledge or consent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit also alleges that Netflix has designed its platform to be addictive, including through its \u201cautoplay\u201d function that \u201ccreates a continuous stream of content intended to keep users, including children, watching for extended periods of time.\u201d Other video services that have similar \u201cautoplay\u201d functions include YouTube, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon\u2019s Prime Video, Apple TV and HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, a Netflix spokesperson said, \u201cRespectfully to the great state of Texas and Attorney General Paxton, this lawsuit lacks merit and is based on inaccurate and distorted information. Netflix takes our members\u2019 privacy seriously and complies with privacy and data\u2011protection laws everywhere we operate. We 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

\n\tOne of the lawsuit\u2019s main points is that Netflix for years said it would not introduce advertising as part of its service, before launching an ad-supported plan in late 2022<\/a>. The suit quotes remarks by then-CEO Reed Hastings on an earnings call in January 2020 as saying, \u201cWe don\u2019t collect anything. We\u2019re really focused on just making our members happy, and we\u2019re not tied up with all that controversy around advertising.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe State of Texas\u2019 lawsuit says: \u201cIn 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 \u2014 constructing the very data-collection system subscribers paid to escape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Texas AG\u2019s lawsuit<\/a> was filed May 11 in Texas District Court in Collin County. The lawsuit seeks to stop Netflix\u2019s \u201cunlawful collection and disclosure of user data\u201d; to require Netflix to disable autoplay by default on kids\u2019 profiles; and other \u201cinjunctive relief and civil penalties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPaxton is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas against incumbent Republican \u200bSen. John Cornyn. The GOP nominee will be determined in a runoff election on May 26, after no candidate secured a majority of the votes in the March 3 primary.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the suit, Netflix operates \u201csurveillance machinery\u201d that currently collects roughly 5 petabytes of user-behavior logs per day while processing more than 10 million events per second to fuel over 40,000 internal \u201cmicroservices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to sharing data with advertisers, Netflix \u201copens its users\u2019 data to commercial data brokers like Experian and Acxiom,\u201d the lawsuit says. The company also has \u201cpartnered with dominant ad\u2011tech platforms, including Google Display & Video 360 and The Trade Desk, to further enable Netflix user data to be merged with information collected off the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTexans would be shocked to learn how extensively Netflix shops their data across Big Ad Tech\u2019s shadowy networks. But under Texas law, consumers should never be left in the dark \u2014 users are entitled to the truth through clear and forthright disclosures,\u201d the Texas attorney general\u2019s lawsuit says. \u201cYet Netflix earns billions of dollars every year by quietly deploying the exact playbook it publicly eschewed to lure consumers in the first place. Netflix\u2019s years-long bait-and-switch has led the company right to where it promised never to be: addicting children and families to its platform, mining those users for data, and then converting that data into lucrative intelligence for global advertising juggernauts. Simply put, this is deceptive conduct that violates Texas law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2022, the lawsuit notes, Netflix acknowledged in its privacy policy the option of an ad-supported plan, and the company introduced high-level terms about behavioral advertising and choices. However, the company \u201comitted information about the scope of first-party behavioral logging that underpins ad measurement and failed to disclose details on who receives or can model against the data Netflix harvests,\u201d the Texas state suit alleges.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the lawsuit, it wasn\u2019t until 2024 that Netflix, after an investigation by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA), \u201cfinally name-checked items in its privacy policy like \u2018playback events (play, pause),\u2019 \u2018app clicks,\u2019 \u2018text input,\u2019 and \u2018time and duration.\u2019 Yet Netflix had long collected that granular interaction data without disclosure.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe suit also alleges that privacy-policy changes Netflix introduced in 2025 \u201cfurtively imply \u2014 without openly admitting \u2014 that Netflix collects and leverages data from non-ad-tier subscribers for advertising, and has likely done so since 2022. Yet Netflix still withholds crucial details about who receives this data, how identities are stitched and enriched, and how household-level projections power its ad-targeting reach. Put plainly, even for those who find their way to Netflix\u2019s privacy policy, the disclosures therein are vague, deceptive, and incomplete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith regard to tracking usage by children, the lawsuit says, \u201cNetflix\u2019s Help Center narrowly assures that it \u2018does not engage in behavioral advertising on a Kids profile\u2019 and then withholds opt-outs for that reason. But Netflix omits that it still collects and analyzes children\u2019s behavioral events and measures ad audiences using household estimates from its own first-party research.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Netflix is in the crosshairs of Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, who filed a lawsuit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,217],"class_list":["post-637286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}