Following a class action, the U.S. federal judge Richard Seeborg ruled that Facebook will pay a total of $20 million to compensate a group of users. Their faces were used without their consent as testimonials of the advertising program “Sponsor stories” in 2011. However, in the end each of the 614,000 users who entered the class action will receive $15 only.
With the program “Sponsor stories” if a user pressed the “Like” button he could become a testimonial for a product or service that had a Facebook page. The consequence was that his face might appear in the advertising for that product that appeared in the pages of his Facebook friends.
When the “Sponsor stories” started, there were many protests against the unauthorized use of the faces of the users. It’s the usual problem of the privacy options on Facebook, which many users don’t know, sometimes are honestly a bit complex so it’s not always clear who can see what by activating one of them and in any case tend to change with time.
In April 2011, some users decided to start a class action against Facebook for this unauthorized use of their faces. By the deadline of May 2, 2013 to become part of that group of users, the total of plaintiffs had risen to 614,000 and they only will receive a compensation.
In the end, Judge Richard Seeborg decided that the plaintiffs in the class action haven’t proved they suffered damage from Facebook’s behavior, an essential element to obtain a compensation. However a lack of transparency on the part of Mark Zuckerberg’s social network was recognized so now it’s required to provide more information and control over the use of the information he has about its users.
Most of the $20 million will be used to pay for lawyers, legal fees and various non-profit groups who participated in the class action such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is the reason why every person who participated in the class action will only receive $15 in compensation. It’s a nominal fee and not a big loss for Mark Zuckerberg (photo ©Guillaume Paumier) but we can at least hope that Facebook will really be more transparent to its users.
[ad name=”AmazonElectronics468″]
