According to court filings published last week, Meta allowed Netflix to access Facebook users’ direct communications. The documents are part of a major anti-trust lawsuit against Meta, filed by Maximilian Klein and Sarah Grabert. According to the plaintiffs, Netflix and Facebook “enjoyed a special relationship” that allowed the streaming behemoth to better personalize its adverts using Facebook’s “bespoke access” to user data.
Netflix bought hundreds of millions of dollars in Facebook ads
The case, filed in April 2023, claims that Facebook’s parent firm provided Netflix access to its customers’ data for nearly a decade, breaking privacy regulations. According to Fox Business, Facebook got millions in advertising revenue from the streaming giant as a result of their strong relationship.
“For nearly a decade, Netflix and Facebook enjoyed a special relationship. Netflix bought hundreds of millions of dollars in Facebook ads; entered into a series of agreements sharing data with Facebook; received bespoke access to private Facebook APIs; and agreed to custom partnerships and integrations that helped supercharge Facebook’s ad targeting and ranking models,” according to the lawsuit.
According to the document, “Netflix programmatic access to Facebook’s private messages inboxes, in exchange, Netflix would ‘provide to FB a written report every two weeks that shows daily counts of recommendations sends and recipient clicks by interface, initiation surface, and/or implementation variation (e.g. Facebook vs. non-Facebook recommendation receipts).”‘
“In August 2013, Facebook provided Netflix with access to its so-called ‘Titan API,’ a private API that allowed a whitelisted partner to access, among other things, Facebook users’ ‘messaging app and non-app friends,’” the court documents add.