Texas Takes Legal Action Against Netflix Over Alleged Deceptive Advertising and Privacy Violations

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched a lawsuit against Netflix, alleging that the streaming giant has abandoned its commitment to being ad-free and safe for children. Filed on Monday, the lawsuit claims that Netflix has “opened Texans’ data for inspection by the same Big Ad Tech community it once criticized for exploiting users in this same way.”

According to Paxton, Netflix attracted subscribers by marketing itself as a refuge from Big Tech surveillance. However, this narrative shifted with the introduction of an ad-supported streaming plan in 2022, which co-founder Reed Hastings had previously vowed against. The lawsuit contends that this pivot into digital advertising enabled Netflix to leverage “the mountains of data it quietly extracted from children and families.”

Paxton accuses Netflix of creating a “behavior-surveillance program” that gathers information on “user events,” including location, device type, search terms, content ratings, and more. The streaming service is said to have shared this data with brokers like Experian and Acxiom:

> Netflix’s years-long bait-and-switch has led the company right to where it promised never to be: addicting children and families to its platform, mining those users for data, and then converting that data into lucrative intelligence for global advertising juggernauts.

Since launching its ad-supported tier, Netflix has experienced significant growth, with Basic tier subscriptions more than doubling to 70 million from 2024 to 2025. In January, the company reported $1.5 billion in ad revenue for 2025. This isn’t Netflix’s first legal challenge in Texas; a grand jury in Tyler County indicted the platform over its Cuties film in 2020.

In addition to the advertising “bait-and-switch” claims, Paxton argues that Netflix has misled subscribers regarding child safety, pointing to its autoplay feature, which is enabled by default on both adult and kids’ profiles. “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,” Paxton stated in a press release.

Paxton is accusing Netflix of breaching the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and is seeking a court order to halt the streamer’s “unlawful collection and disclosure” of user data, as well as to disable autoplay by default on kids’ profiles. Netflix has not yet responded to requests for comment.