Foundation with $6.5 million, aiming to "fund and sponsor programs designed to educate users, regulators and enterprises regarding critical issues relating to the protection of identity and personal information online". Around $3 million was distributed to the original plaintiffs and attorneys. One of the class action organizers made an objection to the Supreme Court, arguing that members from the class action received little money from the settlement as a result of donating to a newly founded charity. The person also raised the issue that the settlement was unfair because Facebook still controlled the foundation since an employee from Facebook was in charge of it. In response to the challenge of the settlement, Facebook explained that direct payment would not be a wise decision compared to setting up a foundation. Each potential plaintiff would only share a tiny amount of money as it is being divided by a huge number of class action members. Thus, the money used in founding a relevant non-profit organization to educate people about privacy issues seemed to be a better-off deal serving the same interests. Significance Beacon, as "a recommendation from a trusted friend" referred by Mark Zuckerberg, raised ongoing concerns regarding user privacy on social media sites and outraged privacy advocates. Beacon hurt Facebook's reputation by violating its Software Engineering tenets and disrespecting the privacy rights of its users. Since the failure of launching Beacon, Facebook has been mired in controversy in terms of privacy issues. The Beacon stories led many Internet Surfers to believe that "Facebook and other profit-oriented social networking sites are large Internet-based surveillance machines." In general, Beacon was viewed as a mistake because it appeared to be too explicit about the intentions inscribed in its protocol. By learning from its unsuccessful experience, Facebook has been seeking other ways to monetize its user database through social advertising. Unlike Beacon, the process of commercialization tends to happen in the back-end system thus becoming invisible to the users. In this way, a lot of resistance from the user population could be largely removed. To be more specific, some argue that Facebook Beacon had paved the way for its subsequent service, Facebook Connect, both adopting the idea of utilizing third-party data. See also Criticism of Facebook Facebook Analytics Facebook Like button Facebook Pixel The Transparent Society by David Brin References External links New York Times blog post showing changes in Beacon over time Facebook Internet