The Hill Shares Digital Subscriber Data with Facebook Without Consent, Class Action Alleges

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Political publication The Hill has violated a federal privacy law by sharing digital subscribers’ identities and more with Facebook without consent to do so, a proposed class action alleges. 

The 20-page case claims that the publication’s owner, Nexstar Media Group, has run afoul of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which prohibits “video tape service providers” such as The Hill from knowingly disclosing a consumer’s personally identifiable information without first obtaining express consent in a stand-alone form. 

The complaint alleges Nexstar “profits handsomely” from its allegedly unauthorized disclosure of Hill subscribers’ data, including which videos they’ve viewed, to Facebook, now Meta Platforms, at the expense of their digital privacy rights. The suit argues that because The Hill does not inform subscribers about its data sharing with Facebook, which the case calls “automatic and invisible,” they cannot exercise reasonable judgment to defend themselves against “the highly personal ways The Hill has used and continues to use data it has about them to make money for itself.” 

Per the case, The Hill utilizes cookies, software development kits and pixels as a means to collect and share with third-party business partners the personal information of website visitors and mobile app users. In particular, the Facebook pixel is a piece of code that Nextstar has installed on The Hill website, allowing it to collect users’ data, according to the complaint. 

“More specifically, it tracks when digital subscribers enter TheHill.com website or App and view Video Media,” the suit says. “The Hill website tracks and discloses to Facebook the digital subscribers’ viewed Video Media, and most notably, the digital subscribers’ [Facebook ID].” 

According to the lawsuit, Nexstar shares a Hill subscriber’s unique Facebook ID and viewed video content together as one data point to Facebook, which the social media platform can then use to “quickly and easily locate, access, and view” an individual’s corresponding Facebook profile. 

The filing says that the personal viewing information The Hill discloses to Facebook allows the latter to build from scratch, or cross-reference and add data to, the detailed profiles it already keeps on users.

The suit looks to cover all persons in the United States with a digital subscription to an online website owned and/or operated by Nexstar Media Group who had their personal viewing information disclosed to Facebook by the company. 

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