Ashley Madison, the dating website devoted to cheating on your partner, was hacked in 2015, exposing the private data of 37 million users in more than 40 countries. And a new documentary series from Netflix explores the fallout from that historic data breach.
The trailer for Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, which is available on YouTube, features interviews with former employees and users of the site, some of whom clearly regret everything they did.
As Gizmodo exclusively reported on Wednesday, Ashley Madison is absolutely filled to the brim with extortionists. And while it’s not unclear what kind of involvement current employees at Ashley Madison may have had with the new documentary, many Netflix viewers will probably be amazed to learn the site still exists nearly a decade after its historic data leak.
The hack was executed by a group that called itself the Impact Team, which wasn’t asking for money. Their only demand was that Ashley Madison be taken down, something that didn’t happen.
The subsequent data leak had real-world consequences for people, causing the resignation of a state attorney in Florida and the suicide of a pastor in New Orleans. And we can probably assume this new docuseries will get into stories that didn’t make the news.
“We all know infidelity can be incredibly destructive and hurtful, but at the same time, the fact that Ashley Madison had 37 million members tells us something else we all know — that committing to one person for the rest of your life is really hard,” series director Toby Paton said in a press release from Netflix.
“Rather than berating people who joined Ashley Madison we were much more interested in exploring why they were drawn to the site. What were they looking for? What was going on in their relationships? And, crucially: What was their partner’s side of the story?” Paton continued.
The three-part series premieres on May 15. Each episode will be 50 minutes long.
