Earlier this month, Facebook (News - Alert) announced it would put its privacy policies up to a vote. At least part of the reason they decided to do this was apparently a way to try and placate some angry users. 

The company has moved one step further in placating those individuals, as Facebook announced they have settled a recent lawsuit, agreeing to pay $10 million to charity.

According to various reports, the agreement was actually made last month, but the terms of the deal are just going public now. Five Facebook users alleged that Facebook had violated California statutes by the users’ likes of certain advertizers using the “Sponsored Stories” function the site recently rolled out. 

The real problem, though, is that Facebook did this without paying the users or giving them a real opportunity to avoid those likes going public.

Facebook has had a spate of bad news and publicity ever since the company released its IPO, and it is a sure bet that the company held off on releasing the news of this particular deal until now, simply because it did not want this particular settlement to piggyback the news of its IPO failure. 

News like this would almost certainly have hurt the company’s stock price even more. It appears that Facebook made this agreement, understanding that the law was not on its side. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh had already said that the plaintiffs in this case had shown that they might have been damaged financially thanks to the use of their profiles and profile pictures next to the Sponsored Stories. 

There was no follow up to the announcement by Facebook as to whether the company would adjust the way it implements the Sponsored Stories.