Ad Disclosure
Check Your Email, Because Inquirer Digital Subscribers are Getting Money from a Class Action Settlement
Published:
If you had a Philadelphia Inquirer digital subscription at some point recently, check your email. We got this on Thursday evening:
You are receiving this Notice because the records of The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC indicate that you are a Settlement Class Member. Please read this notice carefully.
LEGAL NOTICE
Braun, et al. v. The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC
Case No.2:22-cv-04185-JMY (E.D. Pa.)If you had a digital subscription with The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC at any time from October 1, 2019, until January 16, 2024, and used Facebook during that time, a class action settlement may affect your rights.
This is not a solicitation from a lawyer. You are not being sued.
A proposed Settlement has been reached with The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC (“Defendant”) over allegations that Defendant knowingly intercepted the Plaintiffs’ and Settlement Class Members’ electronic communications without the proper consent, and then disclosed to Facebook the contents of those electronic communications, which included (i) Facebook IDs (“FID”) and (ii) software code containing the name of any videos watched and corresponding URL. The Defendant has denied these allegations.
The settlement involves about 180,000 people with digital subs between October of 2019 and January of this year. The Inquirer denied wrongdoing but agreed to a $1,125,000 settlement fund and there’s a link in the email to file your claim for a cash payment.
Meir Rinde summarized the situation in a September article for Billy Penn:
In the Inky case, two subscribers separately sued in October 2022 and their lawsuits were consolidated. They allege that when people bought digital subscriptions and started using them, the news organization installed Meta Pixel on their computers.
Meta Pixel is “an invisible tool…that tracks users’ actions on Facebook advertisers’ websites,” such as the Inquirer website, “and reports the actions to Meta,” the court filing says. The subscribers’ lawsuit defines pixels as small sections of a website’s software code that measure user’s actions. Meta Pixel also uses “cookies,” bits of data that many websites store on computers and other devices.
When subscribers clicked on a video at the Inquirer.com website, the tool sent Meta/Facebook the name of the video, its URL or web address, and the subscriber’s Facebook ID, they say. Facebook assigns each of its users an ID.
That process let Meta know who was watching which videos and enabled the Inquirer, Meta, and Meta’s advertisers to directly target advertising to the subscribers, the plaintiffs say. They allege the Inquirer received “a financial benefit” — advertising payments from Meta — for installing Meta Pixel on subscribers’ computers.
Right, so again, the Inquirer says it did nothing wrong here. There’s some legalese about cookies and consent and a privacy policy, but here are anyway. Not sure about you, but as a loyal subscriber I feel violated. How dare you! (as Greta Thunberg once said) Only cash reimbursement can make this feeling go away. Tell them to bring me my money:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com