Facebook pays $9.5 million to bury Beacon

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 21 Sep 2009 at 08:05

Facebook will shut down its ill-conceived advertising-platform Beacon, as it brings to a close a year-long lawsuit.

Beacon was launched to much fanfare in late 2007, and monitored your browsing behaviour in order to notify friends of your actions on affiliated websites. The idea was that when you bought a CD from Amazon, for example, this information would be posted to all your friends, with a link, allowing them to do the same.

Clearly, the benefits for advertisers were huge, but Facebook users turned out be less than enamoured by the scheme, forcing an apology from site-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

We learned a great deal from the Beacon experience. It was underscored how critical it is to provide extensive user control over how information is shared

However, the trouble really began when Facebook users filed a class-action lawsuit against the social-networking site, alleging that the scheme was foisted upon them, was poorly explained and too difficult to opt out of.

After a year of legal action, Facebook has offered to close down the service completely and donate $9.5 million to a foundation dedicated to raising issues of online privacy and security.

"We learned a great deal from the Beacon experience," says Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt. "For one, it was underscored how critical it is to provide extensive user control over how information is shared. We also learned how to effectively communicate changes that we make to the user experience.

"We look forward to the creation of the foundation and its work to educate internet users on how best to control their privacy; engage in safe social networking practices; and, generally, enjoy themselves more online by having knowledge that gives them a greater sense of control," he finishes.