Facebook to Pay Charities $10-Million in Lawsuit Settlement

Facebook has said it will give $10-million to charity to settle a lawsuit that claimed the social-media site usurped its users’ control over their names, photos, and likenesses, according to federal-court documents cited by Reuters.

The suit, brought by five Facebook members, said the social-media site broke California law by publicizing users’ “likes” of specific advertisers on its “Sponsored Stories” feature, without either compensating those users monetarily or giving them a way to opt out of that use of their data, said the documents. “Sponsored Stories” are advertisements that appear on a member’s Facebook page.

The documents indicate that the settlement in the potential class-action lawsuit, which could have included one in every three Americans, was reached in May. Facebook representatives had no comment on the agreement.

Read a recent Chronicle article about charities seeking gifts from Facebook and its employees.