Not a fan of Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” and think that it’s a complete invasion of your privacy because you think it’s completely unnecessary for brands to announce that you have liked their page or that you have checked in at one of their branch? Well, it looks like the social network will be removing the feature by 9 April 2014. Facebook just announced in a blog post for developers that they will be slowly fading out Sponsored stories:
Domain and open graph sponsored stories will no longer be allowed to be created. Existing domain and open graph sponsored stories will cease to have delivery after April 9th.
Since its launch in early 2011, Sponsored Stories has created its fair share of controversies. Not too long after the feature was launched, a class-action lawsuit was filed against it, alleging that the company didn’t get proper consent from users to use their names and profile pictures. Last August, Facebook agreed to pay a USD$20 million settlement for the case.
With the removal of Sponsored Stories, this means that your likes will no longer be shared with everybody else, and yes, you will no longer be able to stalk see what your friends are up to on Facebook either. Ads will still run as usual however, Facebook will “honor the audience that people choose, so nobody will see information in social context for an ad that they couldn’t already see”.
(Source: TheVerge, CNet, Facebook Developers Blog)
