Three days back Meta started rolling out its new privacy policy. The policy was rolled out for all Meta-owned apps such as Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. Meta says they have made these changes so that users have more control and idea of how the company is using their information and data.
With this Meta has made it clear that they are not collecting, using, or sharing your data in new ways based on the new update and they also talk about how they don’t sell their user’s information. The company has put emphasis on how this new update simplifies a lot of intimidating terms and gives more transparent explanations of various data practices.
Meta’s Chief Privacy Officer, Micheal Protti talks about the same “We’ve rewritten and re-designed our Privacy Policy to make it easier to understand and clearer about how we use your information. We’ve also included more details about the types of third-parties with whom we share and receive information and explained how and why people’s information is shared across our products, among other changes.”
Meta also stated that they will be updating their terms of service for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger ‘to better explain what is expected from them.’ The company says “These expectations include the rights and obligations described in our Community Standards, for example, when we may disable or terminate accounts that violate our Terms or Community Standards or others’ intellectual property rights or other laws.”
The company has clarified that users of certain countries will have the option of not accepting or agreeing with the policies. India too falls under the category of countries whose users can just choose to skip accepting the policy update. According to a Meta spokesperson, in most countries, the Privacy Policy is just informational due to which the company itself is sharing a prominent notice to the users, but they do not have to agree with the same. They further talked about how “In India, users are given the opportunity to accept the updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service or not, without any impact on their access to our products,”
Meta has updated its privacy controls for Facebook as well where they have introduced new audience controls enabling users to share their posts with the right kind of community. With ADs too, Meta has made it possible for you to have a single control for both Ad Topics and Interest Categories that can be accessed on Facebook and Instagram, covering a more wide range of ad topics.
These changes however do not apply to Whatsapp, Messenger Kids, Free Basics, and Workplace as they have their own privacy policy.