A class action lawsuit has been filed in a California federal court against Paramount, accusing the company of sharing users’ personally identifiable information with Meta and TikTok. The lawsuit claims that Paramount disclosed detailed records of users’ viewing habits to serve targeted advertisements, in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The suit seeks at least $5 million in damages on behalf of affected users nationwide.
Filed by California resident Victor Cho, the lawsuit alleges that Paramount’s practices infringe on federal law designed to protect individuals’ viewing privacy. The VPPA, enacted after a notorious leak of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s rental history, prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of information regarding video rental or viewing history. Previous cases have seen major streaming services like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Netflix face similar allegations.
The lawsuit claims that Paramount shared users’ viewing data with Meta and TikTok when subscribers accessed content through the same browser they were logged into on the social media platforms. It asserts that Paramount “knowingly and intentionally” disclosed this information without user consent.
The application of the VPPA has been contentious. In a recent case, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Scripps Network regarding VPPA violations, ruling that newsletter subscribers did not qualify as “subscribers” under the law, as they had not purchased services from HGTV. This ruling has bolstered defenses in other cases, suggesting that simply engaging with a subscription service may not encompass all aspects of the law.
Similar arguments were raised in a case against AMC, where the court ruled that being a user of a service does not automatically classify someone as a “subscriber” in the context of the VPPA. Previous plaintiffs in cases against Warner Bros. Discovery for sharing viewing histories with Meta opted to dismiss their lawsuit “without prejudice,” allowing them the opportunity to refile or modify their claims in the future.
