Did Netflix's stock drop almost 40 percent after a "big campaign donation announcement"? No, that's not true: The story originally came from a network of satirical websites and Facebook pages. A representative for Netflix confirmed public records showing the company's stock had not dropped 40 percent.
Reed Hastings, Netflix's co-founder and executive chairman, did make a major personal donation to the Republican Accountability Political Action Committee, an organization that backs Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) on July 27, 2024. The on-screen text read:
NETFLIX STOCK TUMBLES ALMOST 40% AFTER BIG CAMPAIGN DONATION ANNOUNCEMENT - $2 BILLION LOST IN 4 HOURS. 'IT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE.'
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jul 29 13:17:58 2024 UTC)
The post claimed that the "full story [was] in [the] comment," but Lead Stories found no evidence of that. The quote in the on-screen text was not attributed to anyone and the post does not specify where the donation that led to Netflix's alleged "tumble" went. A photo of Harris can be seen on the right side of the post, implying that the purported donation was made to her presidential campaign.
A search (archived here) on X, formerly Twitter, led Lead Stories to a post that published an image associated with the claim. The on-screen text in the X post is identical to the text in the claim. Circled in red are the letters "ALLOD" and a letter "S" with "SATIRE" in small white lettering above it. ALLOD stands for America's Last Line of Defense, a network of satire outlets. With that information, we found that the original claim came from The Dunning-Kruger Times, a satirical website that is part of the ALLOD network (archived here).
The "big campaign donation" the post is most likely riffing on was from Hastings' personal $7 million donation to the Republican Accountability Political Action Committee. There is no evidence that Hastings donated to Harris' campaign directly. Overall, OpenSecrets.org reports, Netflix employees and exectives have in 2024 made donations totalling almost $6million to a variety of campaigns.
Emily Feingold, the vice president of communications for Netflix, told Lead Stories in a July 29, 2024, email that the claim was not true. She wrote:
This is not accurate - our stock has not dropped 40%.
A snapshot of the Netflix stock graph over a month showed that there had not been a "40%" drop at the time of writing:
(Source: Google Finance screenshot taken on Mon Jul 29 15:52:15 2024 UTC)
ALLOD
The site is part of the "America's Last Line of Defense" network of satire websites run by self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair from Maine along with a loose confederation of friends and allies. He runs several websites and Facebook pages with visible satire disclaimers everywhere. They mostly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
Every site in the network has an about page that reads (in part):
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with "comedy":sat·ire
ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who omit the satire disclaimer and other hints the stories are fake. One of the most persistent networks of such sites is run by a man from Pakistan named Kashif Shahzad Khokhar (aka "DashiKashi") who has spammed hundreds of such stolen stories into conservative and right-wing Facebook pages in order to profit from the ad revenue.
When fact checkers point this out to the people liking and sharing these copycat stories some of them get mad at the fact checkers instead of directing their anger at the foreign spammers or the liberal satire writers. Others send a polite "thank you" note, which is much appreciated.
We have contacted Netflix and will update this article when a relevant comment is received.
More Lead Stories fact checks on Vice President Kamala Harris are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on Netflix can be found here.
