Two lawsuits. Two settlements. Seventeen and a half million dollars. And a media company that, by all external appearances, did exactly what hundreds of other digital publishers are doing right now — deploying advertising and analytics technology to monetize its audience — discovering that the legal infrastructure of digital publishing has fundamentally changed around it.
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Forbes Media’s dual settlement trajectory in 2025 and 2026 is one of the most instructive case studies in the current digital privacy litigation landscape — not because Forbes did anything uniquely egregious, but precisely because it did not. The tracking technologies at the center of both cases are industry-standard tools deployed by the vast majority of digital publishers operating today. The legal theories that produced $17.5 million in liability are the same theories being pursued against dozens of other media companies, news organizations, content platforms, and digital publishers across the country.
That is the point. Forbes is not an outlier. It is a case study in what the digital publishing industry looks like to plaintiff privacy attorneys — and in what the financial consequences of the gap between industry-standard practice and legal compliance requirements look like when that gap is litigated to settlement.
The Two Cases: Structure, Claims, and Outcomes
Case One: Lamb v. Forbes Media LLC (The VPPA Facebook Settlement)
The first Forbes privacy settlement — known variously as Lamb v. Forbes Media LLC and Ramirez v. Forbes Media, LLC — addressed the now-familiar intersection of the Video Privacy Protection Act, the Meta Pixel, and authenticated subscriber viewing behavior.
The Core Allegations
The plaintiffs alleged that Forbes, through its deployment of the Meta Pixel on Forbes.com, transmitted the video viewing history of its subscribers to Meta (Facebook) without their specific, informed consent. The technical mechanism mirrors the fact pattern that has generated VPPA liability across the media industry: a Forbes subscriber logged into their Facebook account visited Forbes.com, watched video content on the site, and the Meta Pixel fired — transmitting both a Facebook-linked identifier (the subscriber’s Facebook ID or a cookie linking to their Facebook account) and data about the specific video content they were watching to Meta’s advertising infrastructure.
The VPPA’s prohibition is clear: a “video tape service provider” may not knowingly disclose “personally identifiable information” concerning a consumer to any person in connection with video materials the consumer requested or obtained, except with consent. Plaintiffs argued that Forbes qualified as a video tape service provider by virtue of its substantial video content offering, that the subscriber’s Facebook-linked identity constituted “personally identifiable information,” and that the Meta Pixel transmission of viewing data without specific, separate VPPA-compliant consent was an impermissible disclosure.
The class period ran from July 25, 2020 through December 1, 2022 — a two-and-a-half-year window during which, plaintiffs alleged, Forbes operated the Meta Pixel in a configuration that created these disclosures for every authenticated subscriber who watched video content on the site while simultaneously logged into Facebook.
The Settlement Terms
The $7.5 million settlement was established for the class of subscribers who viewed videos on Forbes.com during the class period. Individual claimants were eligible for payments of up to $15 — a per-claimant recovery that reflects the combination of a significant aggregate fund and a large class population.
The modest per-claimant payment amount ($15) should not obscure the significance of the aggregate settlement figure. $7.5 million is a substantial recovery for a VPPA class action — particularly against a media company whose primary revenue model depends on the advertising technology infrastructure that the settlement placed under scrutiny. The settlement demonstrates that VPPA liability in the media publisher context is real, significant, and financially material even when individual claimant payments are small.
Forbes denied wrongdoing in the settlement, characterizing the resolution as a practical decision to avoid continued litigation costs rather than an admission of liability. This standard settlement posture is common across privacy class actions and does not diminish the legal significance of the settlement from a compliance or precedent perspective.
What the VPPA Case Established for Digital Publishers
The Lamb/Ramirez v. Forbes settlement is significant in the media industry context for several reasons:
Forbes is a major, sophisticated digital publisher. The company has a dedicated legal and compliance team, a substantial technology infrastructure, and the resources to conduct regular compliance reviews. The fact that a Meta Pixel deployment creating VPPA exposure went unaddressed for two-and-a-half years is a signal about how pervasive this compliance gap is across the industry — not a reflection of Forbes’s unusual negligence.
The VPPA applies fully to digital media publishers. Some media companies had hoped that courts would narrow the VPPA’s application to traditional video rental businesses and subscription streaming services, excluding general interest news and media publishers whose video content is incidental to their primary text-based publishing. The Forbes settlement, alongside similar settlements across the media industry, confirms that news publishers and general interest media companies with substantial video content libraries are fully within the VPPA’s scope.
The class period can be long. Two and a half years of potential liability — for a tracking pixel deployment that likely went through multiple advertising technology reviews during that period — illustrates how extended class periods can accrue before a publisher becomes aware of the legal exposure. Many publishers who deployed Meta Pixel in the 2019-2022 period without VPPA-compliant consent have class period exposure running to three, four, or five years.
Case Two: Berman et al. v. Forbes Media (The California Tracker Settlement)
The second, more recent Forbes settlement — Berman et al. v. Forbes Media — is distinct from the VPPA case in both its legal theories and its scope, and it represents an evolving and more comprehensive theory of digital publisher liability that the media industry needs to understand urgently.
The Core Allegations
The plaintiffs in Berman alleged that Forbes violated California privacy laws by sharing user information with third-party trackers — specifically LinkedIn and Microsoft — without user consent. This case is not limited to video content or to the Meta Pixel. It is a broader California privacy law claim targeting the general deployment of advertising and analytics tracking technologies on Forbes.com without adequate consent from California users.
The specific identification of LinkedIn and Microsoft as the receiving parties is significant and distinctive. Most digital publisher pixel cases focus on the Meta Pixel and Google Analytics. The Berman case signals that the scope of potential CIPA and California privacy liability extends to the full ecosystem of advertising and analytics technology deployed on publisher websites — not just the two most visible platforms.
Why LinkedIn specifically?
LinkedIn’s tracking pixel — the LinkedIn Insight Tag — is a widely deployed advertising technology tool used by publishers and brands to enable LinkedIn advertising retargeting, audience building, and conversion tracking. It functions similarly to the Meta Pixel: when deployed on a website, it collects data about visitors and transmits that data to LinkedIn’s servers, where it can be matched to LinkedIn user accounts and used for advertising purposes.
Many publishers deploy the LinkedIn Insight Tag as part of B2B advertising strategies — targeting professional audiences with premium digital advertising products. For Forbes, whose audience includes a large professional and executive readership, LinkedIn advertising is a natural component of the digital advertising stack. But the same mechanism that makes the LinkedIn Insight Tag valuable for professional audience targeting creates the same privacy liability as the Meta Pixel: it transmits user behavioral data to a third party that can link that data to identified LinkedIn accounts, without the specific California privacy law consent that CIPA and related frameworks require.
The Microsoft dimension:
Microsoft’s advertising and analytics products — including Microsoft Clarity (a session replay and analytics tool discussed in the Zimmerman Reed analysis), Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads), and various enterprise analytics tools — are similarly deployed across thousands of websites, including major digital publishers. The Berman case’s identification of Microsoft as a receiving party adds another advertising technology giant to the publisher liability landscape alongside Meta and Google.
The Proposed Settlement Terms
The proposed $10 million settlement in Berman et al. v. Forbes Media was in the preliminary approval stage as of May 2026, according to Law360. The settlement’s financial structure provides for per-claimant payments estimated between approximately $32 and $189 — a substantially higher per-claimant range than the VPPA settlement’s $15, reflecting either a smaller class, a larger fund, or both.
The elevated per-claimant payment range in Berman relative to Lamb/Ramirez is notable. VPPA cases with large classes of video-watching subscribers typically produce modest per-claimant payments because the class is enormous relative to the settlement fund. The higher per-claimant payments in Berman may reflect a class limited to California residents (CIPA is California-specific), a smaller qualifying class based on the specific tracking technologies at issue, or a different claims submission rate.
The Injunctive Relief Component
Beyond the monetary settlement, Forbes has agreed as part of the Berman settlement to enhance user notice and provide better control over tracker usage, specifically for California users. This injunctive relief component is, from a compliance perspective, as significant as the monetary payment.
The injunctive relief requires Forbes to:
Enhance user notice regarding tracker usage. This means more specific, more prominent disclosure of which tracking technologies are deployed, what data they collect, and how that data is used — going beyond a generic “we use cookies” statement to vendor-specific disclosure that meets the standard California privacy law requires.
Provide better control over tracker usage for California users. This means implementing a consent mechanism that allows California users to specifically opt out of or manage the tracking technologies at issue — LinkedIn Insight Tag, Microsoft advertising tags, and the other third-party trackers identified in the complaint — rather than offering only an undifferentiated “do not sell my personal information” option.
The injunctive relief terms define a compliance standard for digital publishers serving California audiences. A publisher that implements what Forbes is committing to — specific vendor disclosure and granular user control over tracker categories — is substantially closer to CIPA compliance than one operating with a standard cookie banner.
The Combined Settlement Picture: $17.5 Million and What It Means
The Dual Exposure Model
Together, the two Forbes settlements illustrate a dual exposure model for digital publishers that compliance teams need to internalize:
The VPPA exposure arises from video content combined with advertising pixel infrastructure and authenticated users. Every digital publisher that publishes video content and operates Meta Pixel, Google Ads, or similar advertising technology faces this exposure independently of any California privacy law analysis.
The California tracker exposure arises from the deployment of third-party advertising and analytics tracking technologies on any page serving California users, without the specific consent that CIPA and related California frameworks require. This exposure exists regardless of whether the publisher publishes video content — it applies to every page that fires a LinkedIn Insight Tag, a Microsoft Advertising pixel, a Google Analytics tag, a Meta Pixel, or any other third-party tracker that intercepts user behavioral data.
The two exposures are independent and additive. A publisher can resolve its VPPA exposure (by implementing specific video viewing consent and gating the Meta Pixel during video playback) while retaining unresolved California tracker exposure from LinkedIn, Microsoft, and other tracking technologies deployed across the site. The Forbes settlements illustrate this independence — two separate legal theories, two separate cases, two separate settlement processes, producing two separate financial obligations.
The Sequential Settlement Pattern
The Forbes dual settlement pattern — VPPA case settled in 2025, California tracker case settling in 2026 — illustrates a sequential litigation dynamic that compliance teams at digital publishers need to anticipate. Resolving one privacy lawsuit does not close the litigation window. Plaintiff firms that monitor a publisher’s compliance posture will identify the theories that remain unaddressed after a settlement and file on those remaining theories.
A publisher that settles its VPPA case by implementing video-specific pixel consent but fails to address the broader California tracking consent issue has not resolved its litigation exposure. It has resolved one theory while leaving others fully intact. Plaintiff firms operating in this space are watching these outcomes and targeting the compliance gaps that settlements leave behind.
The implication for compliance teams is that settlement of one privacy case must be accompanied by a comprehensive compliance audit — identifying all remaining theories and addressing them proactively, rather than waiting for the next complaint to document what remains unaddressed.
The LinkedIn Insight Tag: An Underappreciated Liability Vector
Why LinkedIn Creates Specific CIPA Exposure
The Berman case’s identification of the LinkedIn Insight Tag as a specific liability vector is one of the most practically important compliance signals in the Forbes settlements. The LinkedIn Insight Tag is deployed on hundreds of thousands of websites — including a large proportion of professional and business-oriented digital publishers, B2B technology companies, financial services firms, and corporate websites of all kinds — and its CIPA exposure profile has been significantly underappreciated compared to the Meta Pixel.
The LinkedIn Insight Tag functions by:
Setting a LinkedIn-specific cookie on the visitor’s browser. This cookie identifies the visitor as a LinkedIn member (if they are logged into LinkedIn) and enables LinkedIn to match the website visit to the visitor’s LinkedIn account.
Transmitting behavioral data to LinkedIn’s servers in real time. Page URLs visited, time spent on pages, conversion events (form submissions, downloads, sign-ups), and other behavioral data are transmitted to LinkedIn as the user browses.
Enabling LinkedIn to build audience segments for advertising. The behavioral data transmitted through the Insight Tag is used to build “Matched Audiences” — advertising targeting segments that enable advertisers to reach their website visitors with LinkedIn advertising — and to measure the effectiveness of LinkedIn advertising campaigns.
For publishers using LinkedIn’s B2B advertising products, this data flow is the core value proposition. The problem, under CIPA’s framework, is that the transmission of a California user’s browsing behavior to LinkedIn — where it can be linked to their identified LinkedIn account — without specific consent constitutes a potential unauthorized interception by a third party (LinkedIn) of the user’s electronic communications with the website.
The compliance gap: most publishers that deploy the LinkedIn Insight Tag have not implemented consent mechanisms specifically addressing LinkedIn tracking. They may have a general cookie consent banner, but that banner typically does not name LinkedIn specifically, does not describe what data LinkedIn collects, and does not provide granular opt-out for LinkedIn specifically versus other advertising technologies.
The Microsoft Clarity and Advertising Dimension
Microsoft’s presence as a named party in the Berman case reflects the CIPA exposure profile of Microsoft’s advertising and analytics technology stack.
Microsoft Clarity — the free session replay and heat mapping tool discussed extensively in the Zimmerman Reed analysis — is deployed on millions of websites and creates the same session replay CIPA exposure that Hotjar, FullStory, and similar tools create. For publishers using Clarity as an analytics tool without adequate consent, the CIPA session replay theory applies with full force.
Microsoft Advertising pixels (formerly Bing Ads conversion tracking) create advertising pixel exposure similar to Google Ads and Meta Pixel — transmitting user behavioral data to Microsoft’s advertising infrastructure, potentially linked to Microsoft account identities for logged-in users.
For publishers operating in the Microsoft advertising ecosystem — or using Clarity for analytics — the Berman case is a direct signal that these tools create the same California privacy litigation exposure as Meta and Google tracking technologies.
The Digital Publishing Industry’s Systemic Compliance Gap
Why Major Publishers Are Systematically Exposed
The Forbes dual settlements are not isolated events. They are two data points in a pattern of digital publisher privacy liability that reflects a systemic compliance gap across the industry. Understanding why this gap exists helps compliance teams at digital publishers address it more effectively.
The revenue model dependency. Digital publishers’ primary revenue model depends on advertising technology. Display advertising, programmatic advertising, sponsored content, and B2B advertising products all require the tracking infrastructure — pixels, tags, cookies, data clean rooms — that creates the liability exposure. Publishers cannot simply remove advertising tracking without fundamentally destroying the revenue model. This creates an economic tension that has historically been resolved in favor of advertising technology deployment, with consent and compliance considerations lagging behind.
The vendor proliferation problem. Major digital publishers deploy dozens of advertising and analytics technology vendors simultaneously. A publisher like Forbes might deploy Meta Pixel, Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn Insight Tag, Microsoft Clarity, Microsoft Advertising, DoubleClick, Rubicon, PubMatic, AppNexus, Lotame, LiveRamp, and dozens of other third-party tags — all simultaneously, often managed through a tag management system like Google Tag Manager that can mask the full scope of third-party deployments from compliance review. Managing consent for this full ecosystem is technically complex and organizationally demanding.
The consent mechanism inadequacy. Most digital publisher consent mechanisms — cookie banners, GDPR consent management platforms, CCPA opt-out links — were designed primarily for EU regulatory compliance and U.S. state law opt-out requirements. They were not designed to satisfy CIPA’s specific consent standard for wiretapping — which requires affirmative consent for interception, not merely disclosure and opt-out opportunity. The gap between what publisher CMPs currently deliver and what CIPA requires is the foundation of the California tracker litigation wave.
The legacy deployment problem. Many tracking tags deployed by publishers were configured years ago, before the current privacy litigation landscape existed. LinkedIn Insight Tags installed in 2018 for B2B advertising campaigns may still be running in 2026, never reviewed for CIPA compliance. The class period for these legacy deployments runs from installation through remediation — potentially spanning multiple years of liability accumulation.
The News Media VPPA Exposure Concentration
Digital news and media publishers face a specific concentration of VPPA exposure that distinguishes them from other industries in the privacy litigation landscape. The combination of:
- Substantial video content (news clips, documentary content, video journalism, embedded social video)
- Large subscription and registered user bases (authenticated users whose identity is established)
- Comprehensive advertising technology stacks (deployed to monetize both advertising and subscription audiences)
- Large California audiences (given the concentration of tech, entertainment, and business readership in California)
…creates a near-perfect VPPA and CIPA exposure profile. Every major digital news organization in the United States should have conducted a VPPA compliance audit by now. Many have not.
The publishers that have not yet faced VPPA litigation are not necessarily compliant — they may simply not yet have been targeted. The plaintiff firms that pursued Lamb/Ramirez v. Forbes are using the same technical investigation methodology against other publishers. The investigations are underway; the complaints will follow.
The Plaintiff Firm Landscape Behind the Forbes Cases
Who Pursues Digital Publisher Privacy Cases
The Berman and Lamb/Ramirez cases against Forbes represent the work of plaintiff firms operating in the same VPPA and CIPA litigation ecosystem discussed throughout this series. While the specific firms involved in the Forbes matters are identified in court filings, the broader point is that the technical investigation and litigation model that produced the Forbes settlements is being applied across the digital publishing industry by multiple firms simultaneously.
The firms with demonstrated VPPA publisher practice include practices at firms like Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman (with a specific travel and media publisher focus discussed in the Milberg analysis) and a range of plaintiff boutiques that have developed media-specific VPPA expertise. The California tracker claims, like those in Berman, draw on the same CIPA technical investigation methodology discussed in the Zimmerman Reed and Milberg analyses.
For digital publishers, the practical implication is that any website with substantial California traffic, advertising technology deployments, and video content is under active investigation by at least some plaintiff firms — whether the publisher knows it or not. The Berman case demonstrates that the scope of investigation extends beyond Meta Pixel to the full ecosystem of advertising technology vendors.
The Regulatory Context: OCR, FTC, and the CPPA
The Regulatory Backdrop for Forbes-Type Publisher Cases
The Forbes settlements exist within a broader regulatory context that amplifies their significance and signals where publisher compliance obligations are heading.
The California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) has indicated enforcement priorities that directly address the tracking technology practices at issue in the Forbes cases. The CPPA’s focus on dark patterns in consent interfaces, on the adequacy of opt-out mechanisms, and on data broker practices applies directly to digital publishers whose advertising technology deployments involve data broker components (LiveRamp, The Trade Desk, Oracle Data Cloud — all discussed in the Lieff Cabraser analysis) alongside the publisher’s own first-party tracking.
The FTC’s behavioral advertising enforcement activity — including guidance and enforcement actions addressing the disclosure of sensitive user data to advertising platforms — reinforces the legal theories underlying the California tracker claims. FTC guidance specifically addresses the adequacy of general privacy policy disclosures as a substitute for specific tracking consent — a position that supports the plaintiff theories in Berman.
State attorney general enforcement, particularly from the California AG, has been increasingly active in addressing publisher tracking practices. A publisher that faces a Keller Rohrback or Zimmerman Reed class action for California tracking violations may simultaneously face a California AG inquiry that compounds the institutional pressure.
The Practical Compliance Roadmap for Digital Publishers
The Forbes dual settlements define a practical compliance agenda for any digital publisher serving California audiences. It is not abstract or aspirational — it is the specific set of actions that would have prevented the Forbes settlements or would prevent equivalent litigation against any other publisher operating in the same way.
Priority One: Complete Advertising Technology Inventory
Conduct a complete, technically thorough audit of every third-party tag, pixel, and script deployed on your website. This audit must use technical tools — browser developer tools, tag auditing software, network traffic monitoring — not merely a review of your tag management system’s documented inventory. Tags can be deployed through multiple vectors, including vendor-side injection, and may not all appear in your primary TMS.
The Berman case specifically identifies LinkedIn Insight Tag and Microsoft tags alongside Meta Pixel as liability vectors. Your audit must encompass the full ecosystem — not just Meta and Google.
Document the complete inventory, including:
- Vendor name and product
- Specific pages or page categories where each tag fires
- Data transmitted by each tag (based on actual network traffic capture, not vendor documentation alone)
- Whether each tag fires before or after user consent
- Whether the tag can be linked to identified user accounts through platform identity systems
Priority Two: VPPA-Specific Video Audit
Identify every page on your website where video content is presented to users. For each video page:
- Document which advertising pixels fire during video playback
- Assess whether users viewing video are likely to be simultaneously authenticated to Meta, LinkedIn, Google, or other platforms
- Evaluate whether your current consent mechanism provides specific, affirmative consent for the disclosure of video viewing history to advertising platforms as required by the VPPA
- Confirm that pixel gating (blocking pixels until after consent) is implemented and functioning during video playback
The Lamb/Ramirez class period of two and a half years illustrates how long VPPA exposure can accrue without a publisher identifying it. Publishers that have not conducted this audit since 2022 may have class periods running today.
Priority Three: California-Compliant Consent Architecture
Your consent management platform must be configured to:
Name specific vendors. Generic “advertising partners” or “third-party analytics providers” language does not satisfy California privacy law’s specificity requirements. The Berman settlement’s injunctive relief requiring Forbes to enhance user notice by specifically identifying LinkedIn and Microsoft as tracking technology vendors defines the standard.
Provide granular category controls. California users must be able to control LinkedIn tracking independently of Meta tracking independently of Microsoft tracking — not merely toggle “all advertising” on or off. The injunctive relief component of the Berman settlement defines this requirement explicitly.
Actually block tags before consent is obtained. Many publisher consent mechanisms present a consent banner while allowing tracking to continue in the background regardless of user choice. This “consent theater” provides no legal protection and is the technical configuration that plaintiff investigators document in pre-filing investigations. Your CMP must actually block tracking tags from loading until affirmative consent is obtained.
Preserve consent records. Maintain auditable records of what consent was obtained, when, from which users, and for which tracking categories. These records are your primary defense if the timing or adequacy of consent is challenged in litigation.
Priority Four: Publisher-Specific Privacy Policy Updates
Your privacy policy must specifically name every advertising technology vendor that receives user behavioral data through your website — including LinkedIn, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and every other advertising and analytics technology in your stack. It must describe what data each vendor collects, how that data is used, and how users can opt out of each vendor’s tracking specifically.
The gap between what Forbes’s privacy policy disclosed and what its tracking infrastructure actually did is the foundational factual allegation in both settlement cases. Closing that gap — ensuring your privacy policy accurately and specifically describes your actual tracking practices — is non-negotiable.
Priority Five: Ongoing Compliance Governance
Establish governance processes that prevent the compliance failures at the root of both Forbes settlements from occurring at your organization:
Require privacy review before new tags are deployed. Any new advertising or analytics technology tag must be reviewed by privacy counsel or a compliance officer before deployment. The marketing team’s business case for the LinkedIn Insight Tag must be evaluated alongside the CIPA liability it creates.
Conduct quarterly technology audits. Tracking configurations change — through tag management system updates, vendor product changes, platform updates, and inadvertent reactivation. Quarterly audits ensure your consent mechanism keeps pace with your tracking infrastructure.
Review and update vendor contracts. Ensure that advertising technology vendor contracts include data use limitations consistent with your privacy policy representations and consent framework. If a vendor’s data use practices exceed what you have disclosed to users, you have a disclosure gap that creates the factual predicate for a Berman-type claim.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Forbes Settlements and Digital Publisher Liability
Does the Forbes VPPA settlement apply to all video content publishers or only to subscriber-based media companies?
The VPPA applies to any “video tape service provider” — a term courts have interpreted broadly to include any entity that provides prerecorded video materials or services. Digital publishers with substantial video content libraries — whether subscription-based or advertising-supported — qualify. Forbes’s VPPA exposure arose from subscriber viewing data, but the statute does not limit its application to paid subscribers. Registered users whose account credentials are linked to platform identity systems (Facebook, Google) face the same identity-linking mechanism regardless of whether they pay for access.
Why are LinkedIn and Microsoft specifically named in the Berman case when most publisher pixel cases focus on Meta and Google?
Because the full ecosystem of advertising tracking technology creates CIPA exposure — not merely the two most-discussed platforms. The LinkedIn Insight Tag and Microsoft advertising and analytics tools operate on the same technical principles as the Meta Pixel: they transmit user behavioral data to third-party servers where it can be linked to identified user accounts. The Berman case is a signal that plaintiff investigations are expanding beyond Meta and Google to the full advertising technology stack. Any publisher deploying LinkedIn or Microsoft tracking should treat the Berman case as a direct compliance warning.
What is the significance of the $32-$189 per-claimant payment range in Berman compared to the $15 in the VPPA case?
The higher per-claimant range likely reflects a smaller qualifying class — limited to California residents interacting with specific tracking technologies rather than all subscribers who watched video content nationally. This suggests that CIPA’s California-specific scope may produce smaller classes but higher per-claimant recoveries than national VPPA cases. For compliance purposes, the higher per-claimant number reflects that California tracker claims carry meaningful individual recovery potential — which motivates both plaintiff attorneys to pursue them and named plaintiffs to participate.
Does settling one privacy case create res judicata protection against related claims?
Generally no — settlements of specific claims in specific cases do not bar unrelated claims in different cases, even against the same defendant. Forbes’s VPPA settlement did not bar the California tracker claims in Berman because the VPPA and CIPA are independent statutes with different elements, different class periods, and different affected populations. A publisher that settles its VPPA case must independently address its California tracker exposure.
What is the most urgent compliance action for a digital publisher after seeing these settlements?
Audit the LinkedIn Insight Tag and Microsoft advertising and analytics tags on your website. These are the specific technologies identified in Berman as creating liability that the Meta Pixel cases did not address. Publishers that responded to the 2022-2023 Meta Pixel litigation wave by implementing Meta-specific pixel consent may have left LinkedIn and Microsoft exposure entirely unaddressed. That gap is what the Berman case exploits.
Are there currently ongoing investigations of other digital publishers similar to the Forbes cases?
Yes. The technical investigation model used to build the Forbes cases — website auditing for tracking technology configurations, network traffic capture documenting pixel transmissions, consent mechanism evaluation — is being systematically applied across the digital publishing industry. Publications with substantial California traffic, video content, and advertising technology stacks should assume they are under or have been under investigation. The absence of a received complaint does not mean an investigation has not occurred.
The Broader Significance: Forbes as a Mirror for the Publishing Industry
What Forbes’s Situation Reflects About Industry-Wide Exposure
Forbes is a major, sophisticated, well-resourced digital media company. It has a legal team, a compliance infrastructure, and the resources to conduct regular reviews of its technology and legal practices. The fact that both the VPPA exposure and the California tracker exposure persisted long enough to generate class action filings and eight-figure settlements is a statement about the systemic nature of the compliance gap — not about Forbes’s unusual negligence.
If Forbes’s tracking technology configuration created two separate waves of class action liability totaling $17.5 million, what does that imply about the thousands of smaller digital publishers operating with comparable or more extensive tracking technology deployments and less robust compliance infrastructure? The implication is significant: the digital publishing industry is sitting on a substantial aggregate volume of unresolved CIPA and VPPA exposure that plaintiff firms are systematically identifying and converting into class action filings.
The publishers that address this exposure proactively — conducting comprehensive tracking audits, implementing genuine consent architecture, updating vendor-specific disclosures, and building governance processes — are reducing their litigation profile substantially. The ones that do not are building the class period that their eventual settlement will be calculated on.
The $17.5 Million in Context
To contextualize the Forbes settlements: $17.5 million in privacy liability for a digital media company is a material financial event. It represents legal fees for years of litigation, settlement fund contributions, injunctive relief compliance costs, and ongoing monitoring obligations. For many regional or mid-size publishers without Forbes’s financial resources, a comparable liability would be existential.
The compliance investment required to prevent these settlements — comprehensive tracking audit, consent architecture implementation, privacy policy updates, vendor governance — is a fraction of $17.5 million. For publishers evaluating the business case for privacy compliance investment, the Forbes settlements provide the most direct available data point on what non-compliance costs.
$10 Millon + $7.5 Million: The Forbes Settlements as a Compliance Mandate for Digital Publishers
The Forbes Media privacy settlement trajectory — $7.5 million for VPPA violations related to Facebook and the Meta Pixel, followed by a $10 million proposed settlement for California tracking violations related to LinkedIn and Microsoft — is the most concrete and practically instructive data point available for digital publishers assessing their privacy litigation exposure in 2026.
The cases establish several compliance imperatives with specificity that cannot be argued with:
The Video Privacy Protection Act applies to digital news and media publishers who operate video content alongside advertising pixel infrastructure. The class period can span years. The settlement liability is material.
California privacy law — through CIPA and related frameworks — applies to the full ecosystem of advertising tracking technology on publisher websites, not merely the Meta Pixel. LinkedIn Insight Tag and Microsoft advertising and analytics tools create the same legal exposure as Meta Pixel. The injunctive relief standard for settlement requires vendor-specific disclosure and granular user control.
Resolving one privacy theory does not close exposure under independent theories. Publishers must audit their full compliance profile — VPPA, CIPA, California Constitutional privacy, UCL — and address each exposure independently.
For digital publishers, the Forbes settlements are not a warning about what might happen. They are a documentation of what does happen — to major, sophisticated publishers deploying industry-standard advertising technology without the consent architecture that California law and the VPPA require. The compliance path forward is clear. The question is whether publishers will take it before the plaintiff firms finish investigating, or after.
