'The Onion' Hit With Video Privacy Protection Act Suit; SCOTUS Review of Act Possible
A subscriber to The Onion hit the satirical news site with a class-action complaint on Friday, alleging that it deployed a tracking pixel that transmitted his personally identifiable information to third parties without prior knowledge or consent, which violates the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).
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The VPPA gives consumers some control over their personal information in exchanges with videotape service providers, the complaint said. It asserted that The Onion qualifies as such because it “engage[s] in the business, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, of rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials.”
Filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, the complaint alleged that the Meta Pixel is deployed on The Onion's news site, which tracks, records and then discloses users' private video-watching habits to Meta. This information is used to build a profile of the user and deliver targeted ads, the complaint alleged.
The plaintiff in case 25-05471, Daniel McRitchie, subscribed to The Onion in 2024 and uses the website to watch prerecorded videos, whose titles were disclosed to Meta, along with his Facebook ID, according to the complaint.
The complaint also outlined how the generative AI service ChatGPT offers access to data disclosed to Meta via the tracking pixel. This specific distinction comes after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the VPPA applies only to the disclosure of information that would allow an ordinary person to learn a specific individual's video-watching history, citing the "ordinary person" standard (see 2505010046).
General disagreement in the courts over the VPPA's scope may tee up a U.S. Supreme Court review, privacy lawyers say (see 2504150047), with the VPPA case NBA v. Salazar on petition for a writ of certiorari (see 2503190047). The NFL, as well as ad and retail groups, have provided amicus support for the NBA (see 2505020048).