Facebook is axing its controversial "Sponsored Stories," deciding to cut the ads that look like friends' activity after negative press and a $20 million settlement last year.
The Sponsored Stories, paid content that Facebook began implementing onto the site's ticker in 2011, should be gone by early April, PCMag reported.
"Facebook will sunset the creation of sponsored stories," the social network told developers in a Thursday blog post as quoted by PCMag. "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."
The company, which boasts 1.2 billion users, made around $230 million from Sponsored Stories content from January 2011 to August 2012, according to Reuters.
Intended to be "less invasive" than typical ads, the Sponsored Stories are paid content that appear in real time and look like activity from friends or pages that people have "liked."
Facebook had to shell out $20 million for a settlement last August, giving about $15 each to 150 million Facebook users involved in the class-action lawsuit, PCMag reported.
According to the 2011 suit, the social networking site "improperly uses the names, photographs, likenesses, and identities of plaintiffs to generate substantial profits for Facebook." The argument was that Facebook was using its members as spokespeople for advertisers without giving them any profit.
Despite the death of Sponsored Stories, Facebook users should remember that the site can still use their postings and personal information for advertisements, The Huffington Post noted.
The company wrote in this week's blog post that "social context--stories about social actions your friends have taken, such as liking a page or checking in to a restaurant--is now eligible to appear next to all ads shown to friends on Facebook."
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