Texas sues Netflix for advertising ‘bait and switch’ and spying

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Netflix, accusing the company of turning its back on its promise to remain ad-free and safe for kids. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, claims Netflix has “opened Texans’ data for inspection by the same Big Ad Tech community it once criticized for exploiting users in this same way.”

In the lawsuit, Paxton claims Netflix drove up subscriptions by promoting its platform as an “escape from Big Tech surveillance.” However, the streamer allegedly “built a behavior-surveillance program” in the background with allegedly addictive features, like autoplay, which automatically plays the next episode after one is finished.

“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,” Paxton’s lawsuit claims, citing the streaming service’s annual revenue, which jumped from $15 billion in 2018 to an estimated $50 billion in 2026.

“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 says in the press release. “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.”

Paxton accuses Netflix of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and asks the court to block the streamer’s “unlawful collection and disclosure” of user data, as well as to disable autoplay by default on kids’ profiles.