Facebook has once again found itself at the centre of a scandal involving violations of users' privacy – according to a lawsuit filed on 23 March, the company has allegedly provided Netflix with access to users' personal messages since 2011 so that the platform could better select content.
A class action lawsuit filed last April on behalf of two US citizens, Maximilian Klein and Sarah Grabert, claims that Netflix and Facebook "entered into a special agreement" under which the social network provided the streaming platform with access to user data via the Inbox API.
In turn, Netflix was obliged to provide Facebook with bi-weekly reports on the recommendations shown and user interaction with the interface, which was supposed to help the social network target advertising.
It is alleged that the personal relationship between Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg played a significant role in this cooperation.
In addition, Netflix spent a lot of money on advertising on Meta platforms. For example, by 2019, Netflix spent $200 million on Facebook advertising.
This is not the first time Meta, which owns Facebook, has been accused of leaking user data. One of the biggest scandals involved the British company Cambridge Analytica, which got hold of data of 87 million social network users – Meta agreed to pay $725 million to the plaintiffs.