Patreon: Blocking platforms from sharing user video data is unconstitutional

That's what I'm wondering. This is regarded as one of the strongest privacy laws in the US and yet I all but entirely forgot it existed as I don't recall any cases against big tech with this law in the last 5 years.

but apparently it only protects 'subscribers' in a financial sense:

>In a continuing effort to limit consumer's privacy violations, Malley filed a class action involving Hulu in 2012. A San Francisco federal trial court found the VPPA's subscriber protections apply to users with Hulu accounts.[10] In 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that those protections do not reach the users of a free Android app, even when the app assigns each user a unique identification number and shares user behavior with a third-party data analytics company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act#C...

It's job security for him. Keeping bridges safe and flying rockets also requires substantial engineering work. I fail to see why the fact that work would need to be done should affect the outcome in any way. Zero reason to make their life convenient in any way.

They're saying that asking whether they can share the fact that you watched a given video with Facebook would degrade your user experience. Sounds like the idea of simply not sharing that information with them hasn't occurred to them.

> The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) blocks businesses from sharing data with third parties on customers' video purchases and rentals. At a minimum, the VPPA requires written consent each time a business wants to share this sensitive video data—including the title, description, and, in most cases, the subject matter.

This might be a bit off-topic, but does this mean also that what Plex did when it started sending out "Here's what your friends watched this week" emails would also be a violation?

I guess at the end of the day the world's legal system needs to decide if when visiting a website do all requests need to stay on the website itself, or if that website is allowed to use any third party sites to run its business as well. That is the crux of what is going on here, not selling viewing history even though that might be leaked.

The facebook pixel[1][2] that is the center of the legal battles here is routinely used not to sell information to facebook persay, but to allow the website to retarget the website visitor at a later point via an advertisement. For example you visit pateron's website, you might get an ad on facebook later from Patreon.

Now, can (and does) facebook do more with the data that goes along with it, maybe, but that is what the facebook pixel is routinely used for.. not something sinister, at least by the company who implemented it on their website.

By only reading the linked article and knowing about the Facebook pixel in general it really feels like Patreon is being forced to challenge this law not because they think its bad, but more because they are being forced to because they are being sued. Things are a lot more nuanced. Should they have just pled guilty though? Absolutely not.

Personally I think the law should be upheld but the lawsuit against Patreon dismissed.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/gpa/blog/the-facebook-pixel/

[2] https://www.facebook.com/business/tools/meta-pixel/