Every time you watch a video on a news or sports site while logged into Facebook, a hidden bit of code may be telling Meta what you watched. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court considered whether a 1988 law written for video rental stores makes that illegal, and a majority of the justices seemed inclined to let a lawsuit over it go forward, SCOTUSblog reported.
The case, Salazar v. Paramount Global, could decide whether many websites can keep sharing what you watch without asking, or face damages of up to $2,500 per person under the Video Privacy Protection Act.
What is the Video Privacy Protection Act?
It exists because of Robert Bork’s movie rentals. During his failed 1987 Supreme Court nomination, a Washington journalist got and published a list of the videos Bork had rented. Congress responded with a law barring a “video tape service provider” from knowingly sharing a customer’s personal information, including what they watched, without consent. For years it was mostly about Blockbuster. Now it’s being used against websites.
What is the Paramount case about?
In 2022, Michael Salazar of Tennessee signed up for an email newsletter from 247Sports.com, a Paramount-owned college sports recruiting site. He says he watched videos there while logged into Facebook, and that a tracking code called the Meta Pixel, installed on the site without his consent, sent Meta a record of what he watched. He filed a class-action suit seeking $2,500 per person.
Lower courts threw it out, ruling that Salazar wasn’t a “consumer” under the law because a newsletter isn’t video. The question for the justices is whether subscribing to anything from a company that provides videos makes you a protected consumer.
How did the justices react?
Mixed, but leaning toward Salazar on the narrow question. Several justices doubted whether a sports site counts as a “video tape service provider” at all. Justice Samuel Alito called the VPPA a “law that is based on the technology of the 1980s,” and Justice Amy Coney Barrett compared it to watching a shoe video on Nordstrom’s website. But some justices suggested other parts of the law could stop a flood of lawsuits, and that companies could avoid them simply by asking customers for permission first. A decision is expected by next summer.
The BeezLoop Take
The details are technical, but the stakes aren’t. What you watch says a lot about you, your health worries, your politics, your kids, and most people have no idea that a site they visit is quietly reporting it to Facebook. A 1988 law is a clumsy tool for 2026 tracking, but right now it’s one of the few tools people have.
The real fix is simple, and a few justices pointed right at it: ask first. If a website wants to share what you watch with Meta, it should have to get your OK in plain language. If companies did that, there’d be no lawsuit. Congress shouldn’t need a Supreme Court case to update a law about VHS tapes.
The open question: if the court lets these suits proceed, will websites finally start asking users before sharing their viewing history?
Also on BeezLoop: a Florida woman used an AI chatbot as a diary, and the company read it, and Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook follow-up, ‘The Social Reckoning’.
Sources: SCOTUSblog · SCOTUSblog (preview) · The Hill (video)
