Trying
to appease European regulators, Facebook is encouraging its more than 2 billion users to carefully review their privacy settings.
“We’re asking everyone on Facebook to review
important information about privacy and how to control their experience,” Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, notes in a new blog post.
In the form of an alert on users’
News Feed, the tech titan is asking everyone to review everything from the ads they see to face recognition to the information they share in their profiles.
In preparation for the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), Facebook already launched a similar educational effort in the European Union.
The broader rollout keeps a recent promise made by Mark Zuckerberg, and is just one
of many changes designed to assuage widespread criticism over Facebook’s privacy shortcomings.
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica controversy, Facebook undated its data policy, and
endeavored to make its privacy controls easier to find.
Now, over the coming weeks, Facebook plans to show users customized messages explaining how it targets ads; political, religious, and
relationship information they’ve chosen to include on their profiles; and how it uses face recognition.
Users can expect to see a summary of the choices they’ve already made, but
they won’t see information about those features they’ve already disabled or decided not to use.
For example, if users have already disabled face recognition, Facebook is promising
not to push them to activate that feature.
Along with its rivals, Facebook has been bracing for the GDPR for some
time. Asking users if their data can be used to power targeted advertising and facial recognition technology is part of an effort to comply with comprehensive European data law.
Last month,
Facebook CFO David Wehner said he
did not expect the GDPR to “significantly” impact ad revenue.