OAN Staff Jenna Lee and Brooke Mallory
5:52 PM – Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit on Monday against Netflix, claiming the streaming giant engaged in a massive, unauthorized behavioral-surveillance program that targets its subscribers.
The legal complaint argues that while Netflix originally marketed its platform as a “privacy-conscious” alternative to ad-driven tech companies, it has since built an extensive surveillance apparatus capable of processing over 10 million events per second and generating 5 petabytes of daily user-behavior logs to fuel roughly 40,000 internal microservices.
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Central to the state’s argument is the claim that Netflix utilizes “dark patterns” and “autoplay” functions specifically designed to maximize engagement among children, allowing the company to harvest vast amounts of data from young viewers and their households without meaningful consent or transparency.
The suit alleges this secretly collected information is then monetized through commercial data brokers, directly contradicting Netflix’s public image as a data-secure service.
“In 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 — constructing the very data-collection system subscribers paid to escape,” the legal document states.
The legal filing also highlights past assurances from Netflix leadership to show the purported deception, specifically citing a 2019 letter to shareholders in which co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings dismissed rumors that the company intended to pivot toward an advertising-based model.
This position was further reinforced during a January 2020 earnings call, where Hastings explicitly told investors that the service does not collect user data, asserting that the company remained focused on member satisfaction rather than the controversies surrounding targeted advertising.
The lawsuit argues that these public statements were fundamentally misleading, masking a sophisticated data-harvesting operation that was already being monetized through third-party brokers.
“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. I will continue to work to protect Texas families from deceptive practices by Big Tech companies and ensure that corporations are held accountable under Texas law,” said Paxton in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed in a Collin County district court, includes a formal request for a trial by jury to adjudicate the state’s claims against the streaming service.
Beyond seeking civil penalties, the legal action asks the court to issue a permanent injunction requiring Netflix to obtain informed consent from its subscribers before utilizing their personal data for targeted advertising purposes within the state of Texas. By seeking these remedies, the GOP attorney general aims to force a shift in the company’s data transparency and privacy protocols for all Texas-based accounts.
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