Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is embroiled in yet another controversy surrounding user data privacy. In the unsealed court documents from an ongoing lawsuit against Meta, made public last week, Facebook allegedly allowed Netflix a sneak peek of private DMs (direct messages) of FB users. The lawsuit filed in 2023 alleges that the social media behemoth earned millions in ad revenues with its ties with the streaming giant, which reportedly had access to user data for about a decade. The lawsuit states that “Netflix and Facebook enjoyed a special relationship” for nearly a decade. It states that the OTT giant bought “hundreds of millions of dollars in Facebook ads” and that they entered into a series of agreements allowing sharing data with Facebook. It further alleges that the company gained “bespoke access” to private Facebook APIs. A screenshot of the document went viral on X that casts aspersions on the roles of Netflix CEO Warren Hastings, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and former CEO Sheryl Sandberg. Hastings joined the Facebook board in June 2011 and left in April 2019. The lawsuit’s document further reads, “Netflix programmatic access to Facebook’s private message inboxes.” “In exchange,” it further reads, “ Netflix would provide to Facebook a written report every two weeks. The report reveals “daily counts of recommendation sends and recipient clicks” that are generated by metrics from “interface, initiation surface, and/or implementation variation (e.g., Facebook vs. non-Facebook recommendation receipts).”
Facebook gave Netflix all your private messages on Messenger in exchange for all your watch history, while Netflix paid them $100M+ for ads.
Meta will sell your data at a heartbeat for profit. pic.twitter.com/GkrFdMoi4L
— Deedy (@deedydas) April 2, 2024
Source: https://t.co/QPD6gP8Uxj
— Deedy (@deedydas) April 2, 2024
Musk reacted to the Meta-Netflix revelations on a couple of viral posts, expressing a cheeky ‘wow.’ The billionaire boss of Tesla, X/Twitter, and SpaceX has previously ridiculed Mark Zuckerberg and his platforms.
Meanwhile, responding to one of the viral posts, Meta’s director of communication, Andy Stone, remarked that the company doesn’t share the private messages of its users with Netflix. He stated that the agreement between the two companies allowed users to share their friends’ current watchlists on Facebook directly from the OTT’s app. Andy claimed that “such agreements are commonplace in the industry.” 
Shockingly untrue. Meta didn’t share people’s private messages with Netflix. The agreement allowed people to message their friends on Facebook about what they were watching on Netflix, directly from the Netflix app. Such agreements are commonplace in the industry. https://t.co/qjeC0iF9Kv
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) April 2, 2024
NB: This is a developing story. More details will be added later.
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