Netflix and Facebook enjoyed a decade long relationship that compromised the privacy and safety of user data. In shocking revelations, the two platforms exchanged information gathered from their users with each other arbitrarily. It has been revealed in court documents that Facebook gave Netflix access to all private messages on Messenger in exchange for all of Netflix’s users watch history.
The unscrupulous partnership begun in 2013. This was when a series of “Facebook Extended API” agreements were fashioned. In this particular case, the “Inbox API” agreement gave Netflix programmatic access to Facebook’s user’s private messages.
In August 2013, Facebook gave Netflix a special tool called “Titan API” that let Netflix see things like who a Facebook user messaged with, both on and off Facebook. The API was provided to only Facebook’s whitelisted partners at the time. This access wasn’t one-sided though, as Netflix had to share data back with Facebook as well.
Read: Meta Tracks Your Every Move, Even When You’re Not on Facebook
To hold their end of the bargain, Netflix agreed to provide Meta owned Facebook a written report every two weeks. The report contained data showing daily counts of recommendation sends. It had data on the user device used (like phone app or website). The report contained information of where the recommendation started (e.g., on Facebook or another platform). It even contained data on the layouts used to share recommendations. This enabled Facebook to compare how well recommendations worked in different scenarios.
The two parties had colluded to keep all Extended API agreements confidential. This secret collusion extended to “the existence and content of the Extended APIs.”
Netflix Data Used for Facebook Ads Optimization
The cozy relationship between the two American tech giants wasn’t a coincidence. Here’s the key: Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix at the time (2011-2019), held a seat on Facebook’s board. This gave him a direct line to Facebook’s leadership, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.
Hastings used this position to oversee all aspects of the partnership, from how much Netflix spent on advertising to how they shared data. Notably, the agreement allegedly involved stifling competition in the streaming video market.
In that period, the streaming platform bought hundreds of millions of dollars in Facebook ads. By February 2015, Netflix was spending $40 million per year on Facebook advertising. Additionally, it had entered into an agreement allowing Netflix user data to be used for “targeting/optimization” in Facebook’s ads systems. This helped supercharge Facebook’s ad targeting and ranking models. The two companies even began lobbying Congress to allow this sort of data-sharing in the United States.
