It may not seem like the most pressing matter in an era of massive financial scandals, but the Securities and Exchange Commission has decided to go after Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings for posting information about Netflix company milestones on his Facebook (FB) page. According to Bloomberg, the SEC believes that Hastings’ Facebook post, which announced that Netflix users had watched more than 1 billion hours of content over the company’s streaming service, may have violated regulations requiring that such information must be disclosed “through a press release on a widely disseminated news or wire service, or by ‘any other non-exclusionary method’ that provides broad public access.”
But despite being served with a Wells Notice for the post late last year, Bloomberg reports Hastings isn’t backing down from his belief that he has the right to share this kind of company information over Facebook.
“I wasn’t setting out to set an example,” Hastings told Bloomberg this week. “I was sharing something to these 200,000 people [who follow his Facebook feed]. I’m not going to back down and say it’s inappropriate. I think it’s perfectly fine. Sometimes you’re just the example that triggers the debate.”
Bloomberg notes that after the SEC sent a Wells Notice to Hastings, there have been “calls for the SEC to broaden its rules to allow social media such as Facebook and Twitter to be used to communicate to investors.”
