• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 6, 2025

A LinkedIn paid subscriber claims in a new lawsuit that the company violated the federal video privacy law by allegedly sharing her personally identifiable video viewing history with Meta Platforms.

In a class-action complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, LinkedIn user Courtney Cole alleges that the company disclosed to Meta, via its tracking pixel, that she viewed the LinkedIn Learning course “Nano Tips for Negotiating Your Salary with Sho Dewan.”

Cole, a New York resident, added that Meta Platforms' records of her off-site activity show that LinkedIn revealed her video viewing history to Facebook on October 11, 2023 -- the same date she viewed the LinkedIn Learning video.

The complaint alleges that Meta violated the Video Privacy Protection Act -- a 1988 law that prohibits video providers from divulging consumers' personally identifiable viewing history.

A LinkedIn spokesperson said, “These claims have no merit and we're confident we'll be able to show that.” 

The suit is part of a wave of numerous recent lawsuits brought by web users who claim companies with online video are wrongly transmitting information to Meta through its pixel.

Other companies sued over similar allegations include NBC Universal, Hearst, the National Basketball Association and numerous online news publications.

The National Basketball Association recently said it plans to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in a video privacy lawsuit brought by California resident Michael Salazar, who alleges that the organization violated the federal law by transmitting information about his viewing history to Facebook.

The sports organization hasn't yet made substantive arguments to the Supreme Court, but suggested in late December that it planned to argue Salazar didn't suffer the kind of concrete harm that would warrant a federal lawsuit.