Florida's Attorney General Sues Netflix For Allegedly Harvesting, Selling Children's Data

Florida's attorney general sued Netflix on Sept. 9 claiming the streaming giant collected data on its youngest viewers and added addictive features to the platform after promising not to.

Attorney General James Uthmeier is seeking billions in damages from the company and asked the judge to order Netflix to stop its alleged deceptive practices.

"Parents were told kids' profiles were a child's own space - safe, separate, great for kids," Uthmeier said in a news conference Wednesday.

"Families believed them. But behind the brand, Netflix built something different."

In the lawsuit, Jill McLaughlin reporets for The Epoch Times,that Uthmeier claims Netflix offered an ad-free service that promised not to collect or sell data but began to track children and their profiles when it launched an advertising business in 2022.

The streaming service offers an under-12 profile option for children which promotes a non-advertising space, according to the state.

Uthmeier alleges Netflix violated the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and the state's Digital Bill of Rights, including by selling sensitive personal data collected from known children without prior consent.

He seeks a permanent injunction, an order requiring Netflix to purge any deceptively collected data from Floridians, and an end to addictive designs that keep children watching on the platform, in addition to billions of dollars in civil and other monetary relief, he said.

"Parents, not streaming corporations, need to direct the upbringing of children," Uthmeier said.

In the complaint, Uthmeier stated Netflix's executive officer Reed Hastings told investors during a Jan. 22, 2020, earnings call the company's model was not based on using customer data.

"We don't collect anything, we're really focused on just making our members happy and we're not tied up on all that controversy around advertising," Hastings said.

Hastings also said Netflix wasn't interested in tracking customers' locations or other things they were doing. "We want to be the safer spy where you can explore, you can get stimulated, have fun, enjoy, relax, and have none of the controversy around exploiting users with advertising," Hastings said during the call.

The Netflix executive compared the company to Google, Facebook, and Amazon's advertising models that used consumer data collection and targeting information, saying Netflix was "not controversial that way."

Uthmeier's complaint alleges Hastings' comments represented to customers that buying Netflix subscriptions bought an escape from tech surveillance, but in fact generated years of "lucrative behavioral data" for the company.

Hastings stepped down as Netflix's chairman of the board of directors in June.

Uthmeier claims that, behind the scenes, the company accumulated years of consumer data and surveillance and used it when Netflix deployed its advertising business in November 2022.

The lawsuit alleges the streamer uses dark patterns, or subtle designs, to manipulate users to take actions the company wants them to take. The autoplay feature is one of these designs, the complaint alleges.

An attorney listed for Netflix didn't respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.

Florida is the second state to sue the streaming giant. Texas filed a lawsuit in May alleging similar violations of the law arising from the collection of users' data without their knowledge or consent.