AARP just agreed to write a check for $12.5 million to make a privacy lawsuit go away. The allegations? That the senior advocacy organization violated federal law by letting Meta Platforms (META) peek at what videos its members were watching online.
The lawsuit claimed AARP broke the Video Privacy Protection Act by embedding Meta Pixel tracking code on pages with video content on AARP.org. This technology allegedly collected identifying information about which videos members viewed and sent it along to Facebook. AARP denies doing anything wrong, but decided settling was better than continuing to fight in federal court in California, where the case has been dragging on since 2022.
If you're wondering whether you qualify for a payout, here's the checklist: You need to have watched videos on AARP.org between September 27, 2020, and September 12, 2025, while physically in the United States. You also must have had an active Facebook account during that time and been either an AARP member or registered AARP.org user. If you filed a claim by the December 31, 2025 deadline, you could pocket somewhere between $47 and $237, depending on how many valid claims get approved.
As part of the deal, AARP has agreed to scale back or stop using Meta's tracking tools on certain video pages to avoid this kind of mess in the future. Keep in mind that the full $12.5 million won't go directly to claimants. After covering administrative costs, litigation expenses, service awards to class representatives, and attorneys' fees, whatever remains gets split evenly among approved claimants.
