On September 9th, 2020, Netflix faced backlash after releasing the French movie "Cuties." When Netflix shared the poster for the film in August, there was an outcry due to the perceived provocative poses of the young girls featured in the poster. Netflix apologized for the release of the poster but did not pull the movie from its streaming platform.

Once the film was released on September 9th, the controversy was reignited – this time with real implications for Netflix's subscription figures. The streaming giant has faced cancellations and backlash before, especially around their use of blackface in recent years, yet this time, the cancellation figures seem significantly more eminent.

Searches for 'cancel netflix' surged on September 10th after the phrase started trending on Twitter. On September 9th, only Netflix was capturing search traffic on the term "cancel Netflix." The following day, the media had caught onto the trend and started writing articles about the controversy. The New York Post captured 40% of all search traffic for the term that day.