Warc, 28 August 2013
MENLO PARK: Facebook, the social networking giant, has
responded to criticism on several fronts, following a court ruling on its
Sponsored Stories offering and a new survey suggesting the platform could
undermine users' wellbeing.
After the $20m settlement of a court case about its
Sponsored Stories advertisements, Facebook has promised to give users more
control over how their content is shared.
A class action claimed that Facebook shared users'
"Likes" of advertisers with their friends, effectively acting as an
endorsement, without paying them or allowing them to opt out.
A US District Judge said the settlement, "while not
incorporating all features that some of the objectors might prefer, has
significant value".
Aside from the $20m to compensate members of the class
action, lawyers estimated the changes to privacy involved could be worth up to
$145m, according to Reuters.
Court filings also showed that Facebook had charged
advertisers $234m for Sponsored Stories between January 2011 and August 2012.
The whole premise of Facebook, however, was questioned by
the findings of a new survey from the University of Michigan.
"Rather than enhancing well-being, as frequent
interactions with supportive 'offline' social networks powerfully do, the
current findings demonstrate that interacting with Facebook may predict the
opposite result for young adults – it may undermine it," the study
concluded.
Professor Ethan Kross told Fast Company that because people
tended to post information that made their lives appear to be great,
"frequent exposure to such information could lead people to feel worse
about their own lives".
He said that this was "one potential explanation"
and other factors were likely to be at work as well, including a lack of
interaction with other people directly.
The court ruling came a week after Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg, arguing that connectivity is a human right, announced plans for a
new venture, Internet.org, a consortium that aims to get the world's population
online.
Speaking to Wired, he rejected criticism that he was simply
trying to find new customers for his network.
"If we wanted to focus on just making money, the right
strategy for us would be to focus solely on the developed countries and the
people already on Facebook, increasing their engagement rather than having
these other folks join," he reasoned.
"Our service is free, and there aren't developed ad
markets in a lot of these countries," he added.
He said that anyone with a phone should be able to access
the internet and outlined a vision where basic services were free. "I'm
talking about things like messages, Wikipedia, search engines, social networks,
weather access, commodities prices," he explained.
Data sourced from Reuters, Fast Company, Wired; additional
content by Warc staff
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