Netflix CEO Reed Hastings promised America his company would never spy on users.
Then he built a surveillance machine and aimed it at your children.
And Florida just caught Netflix spying on children after the company promised it never would.
"No Advertising Coming Onto Netflix. Period."
Reed Hastings said those exact words in a 2015 Facebook post.
Five years later, he doubled down.
In 2020, Hastings told investors Netflix wanted to be "the safe respite where you can explore, get stimulated, have fun, enjoy, relax – and have none of the controversy around exploiting users with advertising."
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier says that was a lie.
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2097706048635175224?s=20
The 66-page complaint filed Wednesday alleges Netflix was doing exactly what Hastings publicly condemned – tracking the viewing behavior of children's profiles down to every pause, rewind, and abandoned show, then feeding that data into a targeted advertising machine.
Netflix launched its ad-supported tier in November 2022.
The data collection from kids' profiles was already underway.
"Netflix told Florida families they could pay a monthly fee to escape Big Tech surveillance," Uthmeier said. "That was false."
What Netflix Was Actually Doing Inside Your Kids' Profiles
Netflix marketed its Kids profiles as a child's "own space" – a safe zone for users 12 and under.
What the lawsuit alleges was happening inside that safe zone is something else entirely.
According to the complaint, Netflix captured granular behavioral data from children's accounts – everything from viewing history and search queries to device identifiers and location – then ran it through the same profiling infrastructure used for adult subscribers.
All of it fed the advertising business Hastings promised would never exist.
The complaint also targets what Florida calls "dark-pattern" designs – features engineered to keep children watching longer.
Autoplay is the most obvious example.
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2097687181561389058?s=20
You watch one episode, the next one starts automatically.
For adults, it's a mild annoyance.
For a seven-year-old, it's a trap – and Netflix built it deliberately.
Florida is seeking a permanent injunction, civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation – tripled for violations involving known children – and a court order requiring Netflix to delete every piece of data the state alleges was collected under false pretenses.
Netflix's response was exactly what you'd expect from a caught corporation: "This lawsuit lacks merit and we intend to vigorously defend the matter in court."
Florida Is Making Big Tech Pay
This isn't Uthmeier's first rodeo.
He's already taken Netflix's neighbors to court – TikTok for addicting children while deceiving parents, OpenAI and Sam Altman for aggressively marketing ChatGPT to kids, and both Snapchat and Roblox for child safety violations.
Netflix is the biggest name yet.
And Florida isn't alone.
Texas AG Ken Paxton filed a nearly identical lawsuit in May – same allegations, same core claim: Netflix spied on children and lied to parents about doing it.
This is a coordinated conservative legal offensive against Big Tech's child exploitation business model, and it's working.
Here's what makes the Netflix case particularly damning.
Netflix spent years positioning itself as the alternative to surveillance capitalism, building a premium brand on the explicit promise of privacy.
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2097371901664366828?s=20
Parents paid extra specifically because Netflix told them it was different.
It wasn't different.
It was just lying more convincingly.
Reed Hastings called advertising "exploitation" in front of investors while his engineers were building the exact infrastructure he condemned.
And they built it on children's data – from profiles Netflix marketed as a protected space for kids.
That's not a business model dispute.
That's fraud.
"The very data they said they were not collecting," Uthmeier said, "they were turning into a tremendous profit."
Every parent who trusted Netflix with their children deserves to know what that trust actually bought.
Sources:
- Kennedy Owens, "Florida AG Uthmeier sues Netflix, accuses company of tracking children's data," Florida Voice News, September 9, 2026.
- Florida Office of the Attorney General, Lawsuit Complaint Against Netflix, September 9, 2026.
- Staff, "Florida sues Netflix, alleging it tracked children to build advertising business," BNO News, September 9, 2026.
- Attorney General Ken Paxton, "AG Paxton Sues Netflix for Spying on Texas Kids," Texas Office of the Attorney General, May 2026.
- Todd Spangler, "Netflix's Reed Hastings Admits He Was Wrong About Advertising," Variety, December 1, 2022.
- Andrew Wallenstein, "Reed Hastings Explains Why Netflix Won't Ever Sell Ads," AdExchanger, January 22, 2020.
