N.C. Customer Sues Theater Chain Over Meta Pixel Data Collection

Southern Theatres, a movie theater chain with three in North Carolina, is sharing customers’ private video viewing information without obtaining their consent, alleged a Wednesday Video Privacy Protection Act class action in U.S. District Court for Middle North Carolina (docket 1:23-cv-00346).

Since at least 2020, Southern Theatres has partnered with Facebook to collect personally identifiable information each time a consumer views a video or buys a ticket on the chain’s websites, alleges plaintiff Jeffrey Hoge of King, North Carolina. Hoge bought tickets on Southern’s Grand Theatre website multiple times from 2019-2022. He has had a Facebook account since 2006.

When a consumer visits a video page on Southern Theatres’ websites, an invisible piece of computer code, Meta Pixel, collects the page’s address, including the video’s title, and sends the information to Facebook, with a digital ID the social media platform uses to match the information to the user’s Facebook profile, said the complaint. Facebook also matches the digital ID to all the information it has about the consumer’s demographics, affiliations and tastes, it said.

Southern Theatres benefits from the “unauthorized disclosure” by receiving enhanced analytics and advertising services, alleges the complaint; Facebook parent Meta gains consumers’ valuable information for its marketing databases, which it can then use to sell targeted advertisements. “Without even realizing what is happening,” consumers have “valuable information about their tastes and private media consumption appropriated to fuel Facebook’s multibillion-dollar advertising machine,” Hoge alleged, seeking to “vindicate these consumers’ rights.”

Hoge didn’t discover Southern Theatres disclosed his private video viewing information to Facebook until after July 3, said the complaint. Since then, he has bought tickets to watch movies at the Grand Theatre in person at the box office or through third-party services rather than on the theater’s website, the complaint said. He wishes to have the convenience of buying tickets to the theater online and suffered “irreparable injury from these unauthorized disclosures,” it said.

Hoge’s private information was collected, shared and stored by Facebook and “has not been destroyed,” said the complaint. He will “continue to suffer harm” if the theater’s website isn't redesigned, it said. “If the website were redesigned to comply with the VPPA, he would use the www.thegrandtheatre.com website to view videos in the future.”

Plaintiff seeks an order enjoining Southern Theatres from further VPPA violations, punitive damages and liquidated damages of not less than $2,500 for each class member, plus attorneys’ fees and legal costs.