HBO Dismissed From Class Action Lawsuit Over Sharing Subscribers’ Viewing History With Facebook

Winston Cho
·2 min read
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HBO won’t have to face a class action lawsuit accusing it of sharing subscribers’ personal viewing history with Facebook in violation of a federal data privacy law.

In a notice to the court, Max subscribers who brought the suit moved to dismiss it on Tuesday “without prejudice,” meaning they can refile or alter the claims. The plaintiffs dropped their case after a federal judge dismissed a similar suit against Scripps Network brought by the same firm that sued HBO on behalf of subscribers.

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The legal challenges all center on allegations that companies using Meta’s Pixel tool, which allows advertisers to track users on websites to measure the effectives of ads and serve targeted ads, violates the Video Privacy Protection Act. The law carries damages of up to $2,500 per class member and allows consumers to sue for disclosure of information about their watching habits even without sustaining an injury.

Max subscribers Angel McDaniel and Constance Simon alleged in a suit filed last year that HBO discloses to Facebook the content they watch on top of other personally identifiable information without consent. Meta hasn’t been named in any of the complaints.

Numerous streaming providers, including Hulu, ESPN and AMC Networks, have been sued for alleged violations of the VPPA over the last decade, with a judge ruling in favor of Hulu in 2015 that it’s not liable because it didn’t knowingly transmit data to Facebook. The scope of the video privacy law remains contested.

In April, a federal judge dismissed a suit against Scripps Network alleging a violation of the VPPA, though that case involved a different set of circumstances. U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel found that consumers who subscribed to HGTV.com’s newsletter aren’t covered by the law because they aren’t considered “subscribers.” Scripps stressed that subscribers to the newsletter didn’t purchase goods or services from HGTV.

The ruling bolstered arguments from defendants in identical cases that simply because a business is engaged in the sale or rental of video materials or services doesn’t mean that all of its products are within the scope of the law. A federal judge held in a suit accusing AMC of violating the law that “an individual must do more than simply take advantage of a provided service – even if doing so alone allows a provider to access her information – in order to have acted as a ‘subscriber’ of the provider.”

HBO and Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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