In regards to the case, the law firm Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, PLLC has been gathering the MasterClass victims, to take action against the Yanka Industries, owner of the online education platform.
According to Milberg, their firm has “reasons to believe” that MasterClass has been using tracking tool that are “secretly transmit details about certain users and the videos they’ve watched to Facebook” for advertising purposes. They further noted that this data may link a MasterClass subscriber’s watch history to their Facebook accounts.
“Many website operators gather data about the people who visit their websites by using an invisible tracking tool called the Meta (formerly known as Facebook) pixel. The pixel, which can be embedded on any webpage, can be programmed to record every action a visitor takes, such as the buttons they click, the searches they perform and the content they view,” explains Milberg.
The law firm further notes that the data collected via the tracking tools can be used by the website operator (in this case, Yanka Industries), to better target advertising to potential consumers.
“In the case of MasterClass.com, attorneys are specifically looking into whether the website is tracking which videos its users have watched and sending that information to Meta along with each person’s Facebook ID. A Facebook ID is a unique identifier linked to an individual’s Facebook profile and could potentially be used to match up a specific person with the videos they’ve watched on Yanka Industries’ website,” the firm stated.
If the accusations turn out to be true, MasterClass’ actions will then be a violation of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).
At present, Milberg is not filing a lawsuit against MasterClass, but is pursuing mass arbitration instead. This is a relatively new legal strategy, according to the law firm, that is comparable to a class action lawsuit and enables a group of people to demand restitution from a company for alleged wrongdoing.
According to Milberg, if it is proven true that MasterClass violated the VPPA, the corporation would be liable for compensating each customer $2,500. However, there was no specific proof offered by Milberg against MasterClass.