Netflix is the best-known TV streaming service in the UK. So how ethical is this entertainment giant?
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Learn more about our company profiles →Our research highlights several ethical issues with Netflix, including accusations of tax avoidance, a lack of action to address climate change, and poor policies on workers’ rights.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Netflix’s overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
Netflix scores poorly in Ethical Consumer’s climate rating.
While the company has taken some steps to address its direct energy emissions, for example, those from its offices, it has not taken meaningful action to cut emissions from its supply chain, which it says make up over 95%. It stated that it was working with and educating suppliers to reduce these emissions as well as collaborating with other production companies. However, it did not go into detail about these actions.
Netflix stated that its data storage was supplied by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has been criticised by the campaign group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice for creative accounting and reliance on low quality renewable energy credits to overstate its success in cutting emissions from its data centres.
The company has some climate targets in place, for example stating that it plans to “reduce emissions by 55% per million $ value added from a 2019 baseline" by 2030. However, as this target is an intensity target – based on its sales – rather than an absolute reduction goal, it is not in line with vital international climate goals.
Multiple investigations have accused Netflix of tax avoidance.
In 2020, the investigative think tank Tax Watch reviewed the company’s corporate structure, and ways that it shifted profits out of the UK. It stated when the company first started selling subscriptions it did so through a company located in Luxembourg, a known tax haven, despite having no subscribers there. It also stated that a Dutch registered company accounts for the majority of money the company makes outside the US. The Netherlands is also a tax haven.
It stated, “In 2018, Netflix Services UK made revenues of just €48m and a profit of €2.3m. Had Netflix’s revenues from its UK subscribers been included in the accounts, it would have had revenues of £860m.”
In November 2024, the BBC reported that French and Dutch authorities had raided Netflix's offices in Paris and Amsterdam as part of an investigation into tax fraud. According to the French prosecutor, the raid related to "covering up serious tax fraud and off-the-books work".
The article stated, "Last year, French media outlet La Lettre reported that until 2021, Netflix in France minimised its tax payments by declaring its turnover generated in France to the Netherlands. After it abandoned this arrangement, La Lettre said, the turnover declared by the company in France jumped from €47.1m in 2020 to €1.2bn in 2021. However, the outlet said investigators were trying to determine whether Netflix continued to attempt to minimise its profits after 2021."
Netflix did not appear to have responded to the report.
Ethical Consumer’s research found that Netflix paid its CEO Ted Sarandos USD $49,834,936 (£39.4m) in 2023. Meanwhile, it was not taking any action to address pay ratios (the difference between the highest and lowest paid workers) and was not certified to be paying a living wage.
Any directors’ pay over £10 million was considered extremely excessive, meaning that the company lost points under Ethical Consumer’s company ethos rating.
Netflix has featured films and TV series about Palestine, for example the series ‘Mo’ which was met with critical acclaim. But it has also faced criticism for its approach to content that relates to Israel and Palestine.
In 2018, The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) called on Netflix to dump the “thriller” series “Fauda” which features Israeli special force infiltrators who work undercover in the Palestinian West Bank to track and kill wanted terrorists. PACBI (part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) says is an “anti-Arab racist, Israeli propaganda tool that glorifies the Israeli military’s war crimes against the Palestinian people”. According to BDS, Fauda “celebrates secret Israeli military units which are known to have carried out numerous assassinations and extrajudicial executions, murder and the brutal arrest of unarmed demonstrators, including children.” When the campaign against Netflix started in 2018, Netflix was just about to release season two. The program is now in its fifth season. Netflix has not responded to the criticisms.
In October 2024 Netflix faced calls for a boycott after removing all but one of the “Palestinian Stories” collection of films made by Palestinian filmmakers. Netflix said that after three years the licences had expired. The decision not to renew the Palestinian Stories licences prompted a coalition of human rights groups led by Freedom Forward to write an open letter to Netflix’s executive team asking it to explain why it had removed 19 films by or about Palestinians.
Netflix also scores poorly in Ethical Consumer’s workers rating.
The company has some basic policies in place outlining workers' rights requirements for suppliers, for example prohibiting the use of child labour and discrimination. However, the policies don’t require payment of a living wage or limit the working week to under 48 hours – both considered basic rights.
It also did not appear to be working with trade unions to improve conditions, or to be ensuring fair purchasing practices, for example that suppliers were paid on time and given adequate notice of orders.
In October 2024, animation workers organised a march to Netflix’s California offices to deliver a petition calling for fair wages, job security, and protection from the risk of AI eliminating the human side of animation.
The demonstration was organised by the trade union The Animation Guild (TAG), which represents over 5,000 artists, technicians, writers, and production workers in the animation industry.
After three months TAG reached an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers – the main association that represents production companies / employers, and which negotiates industry-wide collective bargaining agreements with Netflix.
The text above was written July 2025, and most research was conducted in November 2024.
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