Judge Approves Facebook “Sponsored Stories” Settlement

There has been an interesting update to the settlement of a class-action lawsuit that was about Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories”. This is the lawsuit that was filed in federal court in San Jose, California, by five Facebook members who were upset after seeing their likenesses appear on one of Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” without their permission.

In short, the five people said that Facebook violated California law by publicizing when a user clicks “like” on pages of certain advertisers and when Facebook puts that information into its “Sponsored Stories” feature. At the time, Facebook was not giving users a way to opt out of having their likenesses included in advertisements in this way, and it was not paying users whose likenesses or opinions were placed into an ad.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh decided that the Facebook users who filed the lawsuit were able to show “economic injury could occur through Facebook’s use of their names, photographs, and likenesses”. The result was that Facebook was going to have to pay $10 million dollars to a charity. As far as I can tell, the exact charity was never named.

Today, the details of the settlement have been changed. Instead of Facebook giving $10 million dollars to a charity, Facebook is going to have to set aside $20 million.

That money is to be used to provide payments of up to $10 dollars to each Facebook user who has objected to being included in the “Sponsored Stories”. Facebook has also agreed to create new controls that will give users the ability to opt out of being put into “Sponsored Stories”.

The new details of the settlement have been approved by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg. Both Facebook and the users who filed the class-action lawsuit have agreed to the new settlement.

The story is not completely over, though. Attorneys for the Center for Public Interest Law want Facebook to be required to obtain affirmative consent from parents before Facebook uses the name or photo of any Facebook user who is under the age of 18 in the “Sponsored Stories”, (or anywhere else). The current settlement does not include that protection. There is the possibility that an objection to this settlement will be filed.

Image: Stock Photo Ten Dollars by BigStock