Facebook has a bottomless appetite for gathering user data, but this quest doesn’t end on the platform itself. Instead, much of our private data is gathered through various plug-ins around the web, including the Meta Pixel tool. This sneaky code is embedded in countless websites and provides Facebook with a users’ browsing activity. However, some users have had enough. Since February, at least 47 class action lawsuits have been filed against companies for sending users’ personal video consumption data to Facebook without their consent. 

According to the complaints, these companies (including news outlets, streaming services, and more) are “knowingly” providing Facebook with protected information by allowing the Meta Pixel tool to function on their websites. Some of the suits also allege that this could be in violation of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act.

“It’s of importance that people can watch what they want to watch and not have the whole world know about it and have it be monetized and exploited and correlated and aggregated with other data,” said an attorney litigating several of the suits. 

While this legal action isn’t directly against Facebook itself, it could have a huge impact on the social media giant’s bottom line. And with more and more suits being filed every month, many of these companies may decide it’s just not worth it to continue sending Facebook this user data. 

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