Atlantic Monthly Sharing of Video Viewing Information Class Action

This privacy class action brings suit against the Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC, alleging it has revealed consumers’ video viewing histories to Meta Platforms, Inc., which passes the information to its Facebook website. The complaint alleges this violates a law called the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).

The Nationwide Class for this action is all persons in the US who subscribed to TheAtlantic.com, viewed prerecorded video content on that website, and used Facebook during the time Meta’s Pixel was active on TheAtlantic.com, between January 1, 2013 and the present. A California Subclass has been defined for those in the above class in California.

TheAtlantic.com is a “video tape service provider” under the VPPA. That law, it says, prohibits those entities “from knowingly disclosing a consumer’s personally identifiable information (‘PII’)—in particular, ‘information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services from a video tape provider’—unless the consumer expressly consented to the disclosure in a standalone consent form.”

How does it do that? The complaint alleges that the company uses the Meta Pixel, a bit of programming code that can be installed on a website to gather information and send it to Meta. The complaint says, “The Meta Pixel sends information to Meta in a data packet containing PII, such as the users’ IP address, name, email, or phone number.” It also sends, the complaint alleges, the user’s Facebook ID (FID), along with the titles of videos viewed.

The FID is a unique identifier that is linked to the user’s Facebook profile. The complaint alleges, “Because the user’s FID uniquely identifies an individual’s Facebook account, Meta—and any other ordinary person—can use the FID to quickly and easily locate, access, and view the user’s corresponding Facebook profile.” This is transmitted to Meta in a single package together with the video viewing information, the complaint claims, so that Meta can know the video content viewed by that particular individual.

The Atlantic does not get the user’s consent to this sharing of video viewing information with a standalone form, the complaint claims, so it is violating the VPPA act.

The plaintiff in this case subscribes to the Atlantic and watches videos at the website. The complaint claims he watches the videos “using the same browser that he uses to log in to Facebook, including while he was logged in to Facebook.” Thus the complaint alleges that the Atlantic has passed PII and other identifying information on to Meta along with his video viewing information without ever gaining his consent with a standalone consent form.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: Movies and Videos, Reading Listening Viewing Material, Sharing Personal Information with Third Parties, Your Privacy