Bait, Switch, and Binge Watch: Florida Takes on Netflix

By: Katie Kovalsky

On September 9, 2026, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued Netflix alleging violations of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and the Florida Digital Bill of Rights.[1] The basis of the allegation is that Netflix built its reputation and sold its monthly services on a false promise that it would let consumers avoid the surveillance associated with major tech companies and instead was “kid-friendly” and “ad-free.”[2] The suit accuses Netflix of breaking this promise by engaging in large scale surveillance and data collection, recording information such as what devices customers and their children use, where they are when they use them, and what content they watch, pause, rewind, search, skip, and abandon. [3] Netflix purportedly uses this data to train algorithms and profit from advertising.[4]

Florida’s Attorney General further claims Netflix relied on an “addictive” autoplay feature that kept both adults and children watching longer while generating “billions” of behavioral data points.[5] Count IV of the Complaint addresses the so-called “dark patterns and addictive platform design.” [6] The suit accuses Netflix of intentionally building its platform around engagement tools intended to increase dependency, specifically the auto-play feature, which “increases mindless viewing” and encourages “binge watching.” [7] The complaint accuses Netflix’s platform design of leveraging the brain’s reward circuitry and frames compulsive streaming as an “addictive behavior.” [8]

The Florida complaint borrows a similar playbook seen in recent TikTok and Meta suits focused on addictive design across the country. This August, the Pennsylvania Attorney General sued TikTok for, amongst other things, knowingly designing its app to be “addictive to children and teens” by overriding young people’s autonomy to decide how much time to spend on the platform and through mechanisms that “encourage compulsive use.” [9] And in a ground-breaking settlement earlier this year, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion resolving claims filed by 47 states based on allegations that the platform’s design is addictive and used to “entice, engage and ultimately ensnare” young internet users through algorithmic design, frequent alerts and notifications, and infinite scrolling.[10]

Both the multistate Meta and Florida Netflix suits allege that the companies engineered engagement mechanics (like autoplay and algorithmic feeds) to specifically maximize time spent on the platform so the companies could collect more behavioral and personal data from users, particularly children, then convert the data into revenue. But these cases rest on different legal theories. The Meta suit accused Meta of contributing to the young mental health crisis by deliberately designing addictive features and falsely representing to the public that the social media platforms are safe for children.[11] Florida’s Netflix suit, however, focuses its allegations not on the mental health impact of such features, but on framing the addictive design as the mechanism for a data-monetized bait and switch scheme. Meta’s suit treats addictive driven mental health harm as the primary wrong, whereas the Netflix suit treats data harvesting as the primary harm, with the autoplay feature as an instrument in its scheme.

The Netflix suit additionally could signal a trend to a new defendant category in state actions against “addictive app design.” Netflix is a subscription streaming video platform, and unlike Meta social media platforms, it is not built around user-generated content, algorithms, or social validation feedback loops (the features challenged in the Meta suit). These Meta features are alleged to exploit the “reward” mindset of children creating an addictive cycle of engagement. In contrast, the purported addictive design on Netflix is the autoplay feature, a passive continuation mechanism, which removes the natural stopping point of a user engaged in the service.

Across this recent wave of state enforcement actions, the question emerges on where we draw the line on design features that aim to encourage ordinary product engagement vs. unlawful “addictive design.” Across almost all popular apps we see these techniques implemented: through autoplay and scroll mechanisms that eliminate stopping points, through data-driven recommendation systems that suggest, “More like this” or “Because You Watched…,” to features like disappearing content or live-streams, making users feel that if they log off, they may miss out. While regulators have raised concerns about these features, nearly every one of these mechanisms has a legitimate advertising and user experience purpose. Any well-designed product tries to be engaging by definition. For example, the autoplay feature challenged by the Florida Attorney General arguably enhances the user’s viewer experience, making viewing more convenient and preventing consumers from manually selecting a show at the end of each episode. Until courts draw the line with more precision, tech companies operating in this space are left with patch-work guidance on where retention optimization features cross into illegal “dark patterns and addictive platform design.”

[1] See Office of the Att’y Gen. v. Netflix Inc, (Fla. Cir. Ct. September 9, 2026), available at https://www.myfloridalegal.com/sites/default/files/netflix-complaint.pdf

[2] Id.

[3] Fla. Att’y Gen., Attorney General James Uthmeier Takes Legal Action Against Netflix Deceiving Florida (September 9, 2026), https://www.myfloridalegal.com/newsrelease/attorney-general-james-uthmeier-takes-legal-action-against-netflix-deceiving-florida.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

[8] Id.

[9] See Office of the Att’y Gen. v. TikTok Inc, et al., (C.P. Allegheny Cty. August 11, 2026), available at https://cdn.attorneygeneral.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026-08-10-Pennsylvania-TikTok-Complaint.pdf

[10] Mary Cunningham, Meta Settles Social Media Addiction Suit with States for Up to $17.1 Billion, CBS News (Aug. 29, 2026), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meta-settles-social-media-addiction-lawsuit/

[11] People of the State of California et al., v. Meta Platforms, Inc. et al., No. 4:23‑cv‑05448‑YGR (N.D. Cal. October 24, 2023), available at https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/FINAL%20Meta%20Multistate%20Complaint%2C%20N.D.%20Cal.%20%28REDACTED%2C%20CONFORMED%29.pdf