• by Wendy Davis , February 18, 2025

Siding with Hearst Television, a federal judge in Massachusetts has ruled that the company will not face a class-action privacy lawsuit for allegedly sharing app users' video-viewing information with Google and Braze for ad purposes.

The decision, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns, comes in a dispute dating to May 2023, when app user Michele Saunders claimed in a class-action complaint that Hearst violates the Video Privacy Protection Act by allegedly sharing app users' video-viewing history -- along with device identifiers and geolocation data -- with Google Ad Manager and Braze, an engagement platform. (Saunders later dropped out of the litigation and was replaced by Therrien.)

The Video Privacy Protection Act prohibits video providers from sharing consumers' personally identifiable viewing history with third parties, without consumers' consent.

Therrien essentially contended that pseudonymous video viewing information transmitted by the apps could become personally identifiable when combined with enough geolocation data.

He sought to represent a class of all users who downloaded one of 28 Hearst mobile apps for Android and Apple, and also allowed the app to track their location for at least 250 sessions in a month, and viewed at least 10 videos between May 5, 2021 and April 16, 2024.

Stearns rejected that request Friday, writing that Thierren hadn't presented a realistic plan to identify members of the proposed class.  

“Both parties agree that [Hearst], Braze, and Google do not have the names of potential class members,” Stearns wrote.

He added that even determining whether geolocation data was personally identifiable could require testimony from individual app users. For instance, he wrote, the original plaintiff, Saunders, lived in an apartment building with “hundreds” of residents -- meaning that the geolocation data transmitted from her phone could have identified many other people.

The decision allows Therrien to continue with the case as an individual. But any money he could be awarded on an individual is minimal compared to the potential damages Hearst would face in a class-action.

Aside from opposing class certification, Hearst also sought summary judgment in its favor, arguing that none of the evidence in the case supports a conclusion that the company knowingly disclosed Therrien's personally identifiable video-viewing history.

“No reasonable jury could find that any information shared with Braze or GAM was 'reasonably and foreseeably' capable of identifying plaintiff, or of identifying any specific, prerecorded video content he requested,” Hearst wrote in papers filed last month.