False Claims About Netflix Go Viral After Chairman’s Donation to a Harris-Aligned PAC

Vice President Kamala Harris has received a flood of campaign contributions since President Joe Biden announced on July 21 that he would not run for a second term and endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination. According to a campaign spokesperson, Harris received more than $81 million in donations in the 24 hours following the announcement, a figure that rose to $200 million in her first week.

Several viral posts online have since identified the streaming company Netflix as one of Harris’ big-ticket donors.

The posts are mostly false. Reed Hastings, the billionaire executive chairman of Netflix’s board, did personally donate to a PAC linked to Harris’ campaign, but Netflix itself did not make a donation. There is also no evidence that the company has lost 6 million subscribers since the donation was made, and its stock has not fallen by 40 percent.

Hastings’ donation.

Hastings co-founded Netflix alongside Marc Randolph in 1997 and served as its CEO until 2023, when he became executive chairman of the company’s board. A longtime supporter of Democratic candidates, Hastings was one of the most prominent donors to call on President Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race. “Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” Hastings told the New York Times in early July.

Two days after Biden withdrew, Hastings congratulated Harris on becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Hastings’ vocal support for Harris quickly became tangible: On July 24, The Information reported that Hastings had donated $7 million to a super PAC linked to Harris—the largest single political donation ever made by Hastings.

Several viral posts falsely reported that Netflix itself had made the donation, and calls to boycott the streaming service followed. While some posts correctly identified Hastings as the source of the donation, most attributed the support directly to Netflix.

Following the calls for a boycott, America’s Last Line of Defense (ALLOD), a satire page that The Dispatch Fact Check has reported on previously, claimed in a July 25 post that Netflix had lost 6 million subscribers “within hours of donation announcement.” ALLOD regularly posts stories that forward false information under the guise of satire. While some of ALLOD’s posts include satire labels, many do not, and its stories are often shared widely by users who believe they are true.

A second story posted later in the day claimed that Netflix’s stock had dropped 40 percent.

Both of ALLOD’s claims are false. The first post includes no satire label, but the page posted a comment on the post acknowledging it was made up. The second post includes a satire label.

Netflix publishes subscriber numbers on a quarterly basis, so there is no way to know whether calls for boycotts have eroded its subscriber base this week. The company has seen steady growth in subscriber numbers over the past year, rising from 238 million in the second quarter of 2023 to 277 million in the second quarter of 2024. Subscriber numbers for the third quarter will not be available until mid-October. Netflix’s stock value has not decreased substantially since the boycott calls began. On July 24, the day before Hastings’ donation was made public, Netflix’s stock closed at $635.99. As of market close on July 29, it had fallen only 1.42 percent to $626.96.

The Dispatch Fact Check has reached out to Netflix for comment and will update this article if the company responds.

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