A group of non-TikTok users will ask an appellate court to revive claims that the company violated their privacy by allegedly tracking them via a pixel on websites operated by Hulu, Etsy and other outside companies.
U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr. in the Central District of California threw out the claims late last year for several reasons, including that the users didn't prove that TikTok's pixel collected “sensitive” information about them.
On Thursday, the plaintiffs initiated an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. They haven't yet made substantive arguments to that court.
The dispute dates to May 2023, when California resident Bernadine Griffith alleged in a class-action complaint that TikTok's pixel -- a tool publishers install on their sites to collect ad-related data -- enables the company to compile information about web users, regardless of whether they have accounts with TikTok.
Griffith, later joined by other plaintiffs, claimed that TikTok violated privacy laws by intercepting and collecting browsing and search data from various online services and sites -- including the streaming service Hulu, online marketplace Etsy, and retailer Build-a-Bear Workshop. The plaintiffs also alleged TikTok's technology allows it to collect information about users even when they attempt to block cookies set by third parties.
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TikTok urged Blumenfeld to dismiss the matter without holding a trial, arguing there was no evidence that any “sensitive or identifying information” was shared with either TikTok or outside advertisers.
“There is no genuine dispute that defendants did not invade Plaintiffs’ reasonable expectation of privacy in a manner that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person,” TikTok argued in a motion for summary judgment.
Blumenfeld agreed with TikTok.
“Plaintiffs have not produced evidence of any sensitive information defendants collected from them,” he wrote in a decision dismissing the case.