• by Wendy Davis , July 25, 2025

Siding against streaming video subscriber Detrina Solomon, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday refused to reconsider a ruling that shut down her lawsuit against TrillerTV, which allegedly shared information about her viewing history with Meta Platforms, via its tracking pixel.

The move indicates that unless the Supreme Court intervenes, streaming video users likely won't be able to proceed in the 2nd Circuit with claims that companies violate the Video Privacy Protection Act by using analytics tools like Meta's pixel. New York, Connecticut and Vermont are covered by the 2nd Circuit.

The dispute between Solomon, a subscriber to TrillerVerzPass, and Flipps Media's TrillerTV dates to 2022, when she alleged in a class-action complaint that the company transmitted information about the videos she viewed -- along with her Facebook ID -- to Meta Platforms.

She claimed the alleged data-sharing violated the Reagan-era Video Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits video providers from disclosing users' personally identifiable video-viewing history without their consent.

Solomon is one of numerous streaming video viewers who have sued newspapers, television companies and other streaming video providers for allegedly violating that law by embedding analytics tools like the Meta Pixel on their websites. Many of those lawsuits have been brought in the last three years.

U.S. District Court Judge Joan Azrack in Central Islip, New York, dismissed Solomon's complaint, ruling that even if she proved her allegations, they wouldn't show that her Facebook ID was “personally identifiable.”

Solomon appealed to the 2nd Circuit, arguing that TrillerTV disclosed Solomon's identity when it allegedly transmitted her Facebook ID to Facebook itself.

TrillerTV countered that the complaint didn't spell out how an “ordinary person” could access or use Solomon's Facebook ID, which was associated with Meta's cookie on her browser.

Earlier this year, the 2nd Circuit sided with TrillerTV and upheld the dismissal, ruling that "personally identifiable information" means "information that would allow an ordinary person to identify a consumers video-watching habits, but not information that only a sophisticated technology company could use to do so."

Solomon's lawyers then asked the appellate court to reconsider, arguing that the ruling creates a loophole in the video privacy law.

Alan Butler, executive director and president of the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, previously criticized the ruling. 

“This 'ordinary person' standard comes from nowhere,” he told MediaPost earlier this year. “It's not in the statute, and it's not the right way to think about how to define personally identifiable information.”

He added that the Facebook ID is more than simply “identifiable” by Facebook, because that ID actually identifies a particular account.

Soon after ruling in favor of TrillerTV, the 2nd Circuit also ruled in favor of the National Football League in a similar video-privacy lawsuit. The court said in that matter that its decision "effectively shut the door" to Video Privacy Protection Act claims based on disclosures to Meta via the pixel."