Meta is denying that it gave Netflix access to users’ private messages. The claim recently began circulating on X after X owner Elon Musk amplified multiple posts concerning the matter by replying “Wow” and “Yup.” The claim references a court filing that emerged as a part of the invention process in a class-action lawsuit over data privacy practices between a bunch of consumers and Facebook’s parent, Meta.
The document alleges that Netflix and Facebook had a “special relationship” and that Facebook even cut spending on original programming for its Facebook Watch video service in order to not compete with Netflix, a big Facebook advertiser. It also says that Netflix had access to Meta’s “Inbox API” that offered the streamer “programmatic access to Facebook’s user’s private message inboxes.”
That is the a part of the claim that Musk responded to in posts on X, resulting in a chorus of indignant replies about how Facebook user data was on the market, so to talk.
Meta, for its part, is denying the accuracy of the document’s claims.
Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, reposted the unique X post on Tuesday with a press release disputing that Netflix had been given access to users’ private messages.
“Shockingly unfaithful,” Stone wrote on X. “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 within the industry.”
In other words, Meta is claiming that Netflix did have programmatic access to users’ inboxes, but didn’t use that access to read private messages.
Beyond Stone’s X post, Meta has not provided further comment.
Nevertheless, The Recent York Times had previously reported in 2018 that Netflix and Spotify could read users’ private messages, in accordance with documents it had obtained. Meta denied those claims on the time via a blog post titled “Facts About Facebook’s Messaging Partnerships” where it explained that Netflix and Spotify had access to APIs that allowed consumers to message friends about what they were listening to on Spotify or watching on Netflix directly from those firms’ respective apps. This required the businesses to have “write access” to compose messages to friends, “read access” to permit users to read messages back from friends, and “delete access,” which meant if you happen to deleted a message from the third-party app, it might also delete the message from Facebook.
“No third party was reading your private messages, or writing messages to your folks without your permission. Many news stories imply we were shipping over private messages to partners, which will not be correct,” the blog post stated.
In any event, Messenger didn’t implement default end-to-end encryption until December 2023, a practice that may have made these styles of claims a non-starter, because it wouldn’t have left room for doubt. The shortage of encrypted communications combined with read/write access to message inboxes means there’s no guarantee that messages were protected, even when that wasn’t the main focus of the business arrangement.
While Stone is downplaying Netflix’s ability to eavesdrop on private messages, it’s value noting that the streamer was supplied with a level of access that other firms didn’t have.
The document claims that Netflix had access to Facebook’s “Titan API,” a non-public API that had allowed it to integrate with Facebook’s messaging app. In exchange for the Inbox API access, Netflix also agreed to offer the social networking company with a “written report every two weeks” with details about its suggestion sends and recipient clicks and agreed to maintain its API agreement confidential.
By 2015, Netflix was spending $40 million on Facebook ads, the document says, and was allowing Netflix user data for use for Facebook ad targeting and optimization. In 2017, Netflix agreed to spend $150 million on Facebook ads and supply the corporate with “cross-device intent signals.”
Netflix and Facebook maintained a detailed relationship, with then-Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (and Facebook board member until April 2019) having direct communications with Facebook (Meta) execs including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, Comms VP Elliot Schrage and CTO Andrew Bosworth.
To take care of Netflix’s promoting business, Zuckerberg himself emailed the top of Facebook Watch, Fidji Simo, in May 2018, to inform her that Watch’s budget for originals and sports was being cut by $750 million because the social network exited from competing directly with Netflix. Facebook had been constructing the Watch business for 2 years and had only introduced the Watch tab within the U.S. in August 2017.
Elsewhere within the filing, Meta details the way it snooped on Snapchat traffic in secret, amongst other things.
