Florida sues Netflix, alleging exploitation of family data for advertising
Florida’s attorney general has sued Netflix, claiming the company built its ad business on detailed viewing data collected from families and children, a promise it allegedly broke. The state seeks penalties and data deletion. Netflix denies these allegations.
September 11, 2026 – 12:15 pm
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Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, has filed a 66-page complaint against Netflix on September 9th in the circuit court for St. Johns County.
"Netflix told Florida families they could pay a monthly fee to escape Big Tech surveillance. That was false," Uthmeier stated.
What Florida alleges Netflix promised:
The lawsuit centers on statements made by Netflix executives before the launch of its ad-supported tier in November 2022.
- In 2016, Netflix vice president Todd Yellin criticized Google and Facebook for "serving two masters" – the consumer and the advertiser. He suggested that Netflix would never follow a similar path.
- A 2019 shareholder letter assured investors: “any suggestion Netflix is… selling advertising… is false.” The letter emphasized that this was "a deep part of our brand proposition."
- In January 2020, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings claimed on an earnings call that Netflix "doesn’t collect anything," contrasting their approach with those of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. He reiterated these points in a Vanity Fair interview.
However, the complaint cites a 2016 talk by Netflix engineer Peter Bakas, who stated: “We’re really a [data] logging company… a logging company that occasionally streams movies.”
Florida alleges Netflix logs billions of user "events," including clicks, viewing duration, pauses, rewinds, skips, location, and device usage. It links this data collection to the platform’s dramatic growth over the past decade:
- Annual revenue rose from approximately $15 billion in 2018 to a projected $50 billion or more in 2026.
- Paid memberships grew from just over 130 million to well beyond 300 million.
The allegations about children:
Florida argues that Netflix marketed kid profiles as "Great for kids," but secretly collected behavioral data through:
- Kids profiles: Tracking what children click, replay, or skip.
- Netflix Playground: A platform for interactive content aimed at children.
- Netflix Games: Collects behavioral data on gameplay choices and patterns.
The lawsuit also criticizes Netflix’s autoplay feature, which defaults to on for all profiles (including kids’ profiles), automatically starting the next episode. It further alleges that cancellation screens are designed to obstruct users from canceling their subscriptions.