‘Stop selling people’s private information’: targeted ads on trial at US highest court

Targeted ads are supposed to be helpful, but too often they’re useless at best and an eyesore at worst. Buy a TV, and ads for it can stalk you for weeks, even on streaming services you already pay for.

Even the ad industry’s own research shows how sick and tired people are of ads. An October 2026 Omnicom survey found that 65% of US consumers tried to avoid ads, while 41% paid for subscriptions specifically to escape them. And AI lets advertisers pump out more ads, faster, with arguably much worse results. On streaming services, that includes AI casino ad slop that some viewers have called “sinister,” while others say they’re ready to cancel.

Behind all that ad noise lurks a much bigger privacy problem: companies tracking what you watch and click, tying it to your identity, and passing it to advertisers without your permission. One sports fan’s lawsuit has brought that hidden exchange to the US Supreme Court, where several justices had little patience for the industry’s favourite excuse: someone has to pay for free content.

An old videotape law takes on the ad business

That sports fan is Michael Salazar, who signed up for the free newsletter of 247Sports.com, a Paramount-owned sports website. His lawsuit centres on the site’s use of Meta Pixel — a piece of tracking code — to send Facebook his viewing history together with his Facebook ID, without his consent. He filed the proposed class action in 2022 under the Video Privacy Protection Act, or VPPA.

Congress passed that law in 1988 after a journalist obtained and published the video rental history of Robert Bork, then a nominee to the Supreme Court. The VPPA restricted video businesses from sharing identifiable viewing records without consent or another legal exception. Congress later amended it to allow consent to be given online.

Paramount argues that Salazar falls outside those protections because he subscribed to a newsletter rather than a video service. Salazar points out that the law refers to subscribers of goods or services, without specifying that the subscription itself must be for videos. The lower courts sided with Paramount. The Supreme Court must now decide how broadly the law applies. It heard arguments on October 14, 2026 and is expected to rule by mid-2027.

But that is not even the most interesting part. Beyond the newsletter and the argument about the wording of a law passed before Facebook was even conceived lies an assumption the ad business has got far too used to: once you use an online service, it is free to collect your data. Not just the name or email you knowingly enter in a form, but the invisible trail you leave behind — identifiers, clicks, and browsing history you may never realise you are sharing.

Asking permission is apparently bad for business

At the hearing, Paramount tried to make asking users’ permission sound like a threat to the free internet. When liberal Justice Elena Kagan told the company it could obtain consent or “stop selling people’s private information”, its lawyer, Paul Clement, replied: “Yeah. Or put everything behind a pay wall. That would be great.”

Not only would that be bad for business, but meeting the legal requirements for consent would also be difficult, Paramount’s lawyer claimed. The logic was familiar: let us collect and share your data without asking, or say goodbye to the free product. But it is rare to see that trade-off laid out so clearly. By that logic, if giving users an informed choice threatens the business, then keeping them from making that choice is what keeps it profitable.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor had challenged directly what she called “a business model that might contradict the law.” If Paramount wanted to keep sharing viewers’ information, it would have to ask permission first:“get consent, or just don’t do it,” she said. If only the choice were that simple… Or maybe it is. Let’s imagine.

Making the ad industry take “no” for an answer is a big ask indeed

Imagine websites having to ask before tools such as the Meta Pixel, Google’s advertising tags or TikTok’s Pixel send advertisers details of what you view, click or buy.

That would probably mean a lot more cookie-style pop-ups (and more for us to help you block), but also less data — and potentially less money — for companies used to treating silence as consent. There are examples to this. Apple’s case has already shown why those companies might worry about asking first. Its App Tracking Transparency framework requires apps to get permission before tracking people across other companies’ apps and websites. According to Adjust’s early-2026 global figures, 62% of iOS users did not give apps the permission to track them when asked, albeit down from 65% in the first quarter of 2025.

Meta’s answer to pressure over its use of personal data in Europe was to put a price on saying no. Facebook and Instagram users initially got two options: let Meta use their data for personalized ads, or pay for an ad-free subscription. But EU privacy regulators pushed back in 2024, saying this generally did not count as valid consent. After further pressure, Meta added a free option with less personalised ads using less data.

Meta has five million reasons to back Paramount

Since Salazar filed his lawsuit in 2022, both sides have gathered support. Unsurprisingly, Meta has come to Paramount’s defence, alongside groups representing tech companies, retailers, and media businesses. In its court filing, Meta calls lawsuits over pixels nothing less than a “broadside attack on modern analytics tools,” making its business of tracking people sound like a public service under siege.

For all that drama, Meta has a business to protect: its Pixel appears on more than five million live websites, feeding data into its advertising system. Depending on how a website sets it up, the Pixel can send Meta details of what you view, click or buy, helping it target ads and measure their results. That activity can be linked to your Facebook account. Cookies and identifiers help Meta connect the dots, while its advanced matching tools can use customer details supplied by websites to match that activity to an account.

The information reaching Meta can get much more personal than a list of sports videos. We’ve covered Meta Pixel sending medical information from hospital websites and income, refund amounts and other details from tax-filing services. A 2026 study of Meta Pixel configurations found the Pixel tracking interactions linked to medical appointments and specific conditions. Researchers also caught Meta in 2025 using local connections on Android devices to link browser activity to identities in Facebook and Instagram apps, even in private browsing. Meta paused the practice after it was exposed.

Yet its court filing boasts of “robust privacy protections.” This is rich coming from the same company that agreed to a $5 billion settlement in 2019 over allegations that it misled users about access to their information and violated an earlier privacy order.

On Salazar’s side, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, argues that using third-party tracking tools“is not a technological or economic necessity, let alone one that warrants judicially rewriting an important federal privacy statute like the VPPA.” In other words, keeping this tracking business profitable is no excuse for the Court to narrow the law’s protections.

EPIC also points to an alternative: websites can show videos and sell ads without sending viewers’ histories to Meta. A sports site can advertise team merchandise based on the page someone is reading; it does not need to tell Facebook who watched which video to work out that its readers might like sports. But that would mean shaking up a system that companies like Meta have been feeding off for years.

Whatever the verdict, the case is forcing companies to explain an arrangement that reaches people well beyond the US or this particular lawsuit. Much of the supposedly free internet has been charging us in personal information for years, without making the price clear. We should be told what is collected, who receives it, and how it will be used — and be able to refuse.

Watching a video should not give a business open-ended permission to add our private habits to another company’s advertising database.