Netflix has been reading our Facebook messages for years

Documents revealed in an ongoing lawsuit filed last year show that Facebook's parent company Meta allows Netflix to read users' private messages.

In the competition case filed against Facebook's parent company Meta last April, new documents were recently revealed in court. The documents reveal the chilling relationship between Meta and Netflix. The most striking claim is that Meta privileged Netflix and allowed it to read users' private messages.

Facebook allegedly gave Netflix creepy privileges

A class action lawsuit filed in the US alleged that Netflix and Facebook had a special relationship and that the social media platform provided the world's largest streaming service with access to user data. It is stated that the two giant companies have been in partnership since 2011 to help strengthen Facebook's ad targeting and ranking models. In this context, the simplest summary of the bilateral relationship is as follows: Meta shared Facebook users' personal private messages with Netflix, while Netflix shared its own data with Meta in return.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are said to be the protagonists of this privileged partnership. However, lawyers state that this complex relationship took place within a month after Hastings joined Facebook's board of directors. According to the allegations, Netflix's access to private messages was carried out through an interface called Inbox API. In return, Netflix provided Facebook, which changed its name to Meta in October 2021, with a fortnightly report showing how its users interacted with the platform.

This is not Meta's first incident with user data

It is unclear for now what decisions will be made for Meta and Netlix as a result of these allegations and how the investigation will proceed. On the other hand, this is not Meta's first case. In 2022, Ireland fined Meta $ 284 million as a result of the leak of personal data of more than half a billion users to the internet. In the same year, Meta agreed to pay $725 million to resolve investigations into Cambridge Analytica after its role in the Brexit vote and the 2016 presidential election was revealed.