Facebook opens the wallet and closes the case of Sponsored Stories, the program that took information on a product voluntarily shared by a user with his contacts and then had it displayed on ads on other pages, complete with data and profile photos of unsuspecting users.
To put an end to the class action on advertisements the social network of 1 billion friends has been sentenced to pay out 20 million dollars. However, the involuntary testimonials involved, around 600, will receive a little more than a symbolic amount, i.e. 15 dollars each. The contained amount, according to the judge who fixed it, can be explained by the difficulty of documenting and quantifying any economic damage.
What matters most, at this point, is the victory over an increasingly hot topic, that of defending the privacy of Facebook subscribers. The social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg has, in fact, had to sign a formal commitment to launch more detailed controls in the management of the information shared within its promotional advertisements program as well as having, in recent years, increased the level of confidentiality in accessing applications for mobile devices, enabling users to evaluate what information they want shared through applications.
