Texas sues Netflix for spying on kids; Attorney General Ken Paxton says: Company has built a surveillance program designed to...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Netflix, accusing the streaming giant of secretly hoovering up data from millions of users, including children, and engineering its platform to keep them hooked. The lawsuit, filed Monday in a Collin County state court near Dallas, claims Netflix tracked viewing habits, devices, and household networks, then sold the information to commercial data brokers and ad-tech firms.According to the complaint, Netflix pulled in billions of dollars a year from this trade while publicly insisting it did no such thing. "When you watch Netflix, Netflix watches you," the filing states.Paxton's case leans heavily on a 2020 line from co-founder Reed Hastings, who told audiences "we don't collect anything" as he tried to set Netflix apart from Amazon, Meta, and Google. The state argues that claim sits at the centre of a years-long deception. Once Netflix had stockpiled enough user data under those promises, the complaint says, it pivoted and built an ads business that mirrors everything it once attacked. The shift matters because Netflix now has 325 million-plus subscribers and projects 2026 revenue of up to $51.7 billion, with ad income expected to nearly double.The suit also takes aim at autoplay, the feature that rolls into the next episode the moment one ends. Texas calls it a manipulative "dark pattern" engineered to glue kids to the screen for hours. The complaint says this tracking applied not just to adult accounts but to children's profiles too.The lawsuit asks the court to make Netflix purge data it allegedly gathered without permission, switch off autoplay by default on children's profiles, and stop targeted advertising without explicit consent. Civil penalties could climb to $10,000 per violation.Netflix pushed back hard. A spokesperson said the lawsuit "lacks merit" and rests on distorted information, adding the company would address the claims in court.Paxton, a Republican running for the US Senate against incumbent John Cornyn, cited a March California jury verdict that found Meta and YouTube liable for addictive design as precedent for his case.