May 11 (Reuters) – Netflix was sued on Monday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who accused the streaming company of spying on children and other consumers by collecting their data without consent, and designing its platform to be addictive.
Texas said Netflix has for years falsely represented to consumers that it did not collect or share user data, when it actually tracked viewing habits and preferences and sold the data to commercial data brokers and advertising technology companies, making billions of dollars a year.
The complaint quoted former Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings as saying in 2020 “we don’t collect anything,” as he sought to distinguish Netflix from Amazon.com, Facebook, Google with regard to data collection.
“When you watch Netflix, Netflix watches you,” according to the complaint filed in a state court in Collin County, near Dallas.
Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
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