Facebook forced to let users opt out of sponsored stories
Facebook has been made to allow users to opt out of their names being used in sponsored stories, following a legal settlement against five users.
As part of the £6m settlement to drop the case, users will be given the chance to opt out of their profiles being used in these adverts for at least the next two years.
Sponsored stories promote the fact that a member has ‘liked’ a product to their friends, under the theory that a referral from a friend would make users more likely to check out the product.
According to the statement: “Facebook will create an easily accessible mechanism that enables users to view the subset of their interactions and other content that have been displayed in Sponsored Stories. Facebook will further engineer settings to enable users, upon viewing the interactions and other content that have been used in Sponsored Stories, to control which of these interactions and other content are edible to appear in additional Sponsored Stories.”