Stark et al. vs. Patreon, Inc. Class Action Settlement | Hacker News Reader

Stark et al. vs. Patreon, Inc. Class Action Settlement

patreonsettlement.com

54 pointspabs320 comments

I'm not going to submit a claim simply out of pity for Patreon here.

Almost every website around ~2013 sent heaps of information to Facebook just by embedding the like button in their page, and often did so unknowingly.

Nerd sites were screaming about it, extensions existed to remove them, for the reasons you say. The web devs generally knew this was an issue but the clicks were more important. I don't pity them.

Ignorance is no excuse. Don't dump loads of third-party JS onto your site without understanding what it does. That's negligence.

If Facebook misrepresented what the code (or whatever) Patreon included was going to do, sure, ok, fair. But then in that case Facebook should be the target of the suit. (Unclear who should sue whom, though... users sue Patreon and Patreon sues Facebook? Users sue Facebook directly?)

> JS onto your site without understanding what it does. That's negligence

Everybody understood what it did. It was legal at the time. Then it was made illegal. The lawsuit literally retroactively includes the period in which it was legal.

Seems that the lawsuit is predicated on the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act and that the plaintiffs are arguing it was never legal.

Are there any cases litigated to trial on this? This case avoids trial by settling, for better or worse.

Usually it doesn't matter if you submit a claim or not. The company receives the same fine. It's just that the number of slices increases.

I would read the fine print. One settlement I was a part of said “if you don’t accept the money… it goes straight to the government!”

So is this basically there was a fb tracking pixel on the patreon video page?

Not trying to defend a big corporation, but I don't understand what Patreon did wrong...

Patreon included Facebook tracking whatevers on their site/app, and that had the effect of sending PII to Facebook. Allegedly video viewing preferences were also sent to Facebook.

I didn't realize this was actually illegal. Glad it is, if so.

Exaggerating for comedic effect: Patreon did the equivalent of telling your parents that you are into midget porn, while your parents consider midgets abomination unto god.

not my parents but whatever

From the FAQ at https://www.patreonsettlement.com/faq/

> 1. What is happening in this lawsuit?

> A group of people (called Plaintiffs) filed a class action lawsuit against Patreon, Inc. ("Patreon")—the defendant in this lawsuit. These Plaintiffs claimed that Patreon disclosed its users' identities and video-viewing preferences without consent in violation of federal law. Patreon denies these allegations.

> In April 2024, Patreon agreed to pay $7.25 million to settle the claims against it. The group of people that Patreon has agreed to pay is called the Settlement Class and it includes everyone who, between April 1, 2016 and September 23, 2024, requested or obtained video content on the Patreon website (patreon.com) while in the United States and at a time the person had a Facebook account and a Patreon account. If you are in this group and want to get paid, you must submit a claim. Details on how to submit a claim are provided below.

> After deduction of the costs of notice and settlement administration, any Court-approved award of attorneys’ fees (up to 30% of the Settlement Fund), litigation costs, and any service awards for the Class Representatives (up to $7,500 to each of the six individual Class Representatives), the Settlement Fund will be divided equally among eligible class members.

> We will not know the final amount that each class member will receive until all claims are completed. Based on claims rates in similar cases, eligible class members may receive between $35 and $175 each. The actual amount that each class member receives will be determined once all claims are evaluated, and may be higher or lower than these estimates.

I guess if there's a general trend of $35 per privacy violation companies might take a bit more serious.

> I guess if there's a general trend of $35 per privacy violation companies might take a bit more serious.

So far I received a payout of 210€ for one privacy violation. THAT is a more adequate sum!

You could always sue them yourself. no need to become part of the class action.

You can but judges don't really like it when you use their time for something already decided. unless you have a new arguement or reason to object to the original for some reason just join it. Lawyers are the only ones who win in court anyway.

> I guess if there's a general trend of $35 per privacy violation companies might take a bit more serious.

The pricing of settlements is frequently tied to the size of insurance policies. So you’re right, but it may take a few hops for the trend to percolate.

Not really. How much has Meta paid out so far on all the biometric settlements? Hundreds of millions? Everyone I know got a $900 from that. Then the Google one was another couple of hundred, right?

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