Meta Says, Complete Make Over Of Privacy Policy, But No New User Data Access Rights
Meta Platforms Inc, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, announced on Thursday that it has redesigned and rewritten its privacy policy completely for ease of understanding, including the terms of services, effective from July 26.
"The last three years have brought a number of changes to the privacy landscape as a whole, including to peoples' desire to better understand how their data is being used," said the company.
Indeed, that comes when there is a raging debate globally on individuals' rights to their privacy or human right to privacy.
The human right to privacy relates to an individual's ability to determine when, how, and for what purpose others, including companies, handle their personal information.
Protecting privacy is essential to ensuring dignity, safety and confidence. It allows individuals to choose how their data is used and freely develop their personalities without any worries of misuse.
The social media giant said the overhaul in its privacy policy does not give the company any new access rights to the user data, and instead, it gives Meta more power over tweaking the advertisements based on customer preferences and sharing information, with all controls in one single location.
"While the language looks different in many places, these updates give us no new rights to people's data. Our goal here is to be clearer and more transparent by adding more details and examples of our data practices," said Meta.
"We've also introduced new controls to manage the topics users want to see ads about as well as who sees their posts. While people will begin receiving in-product notifications starting 5/26, this new version will go into effect on July 26, 2022," the social media company added.
Meta also said the updated policy covers Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, but not WhatsApp and that the overhauled design gives consolidated access to privacy related controls, with more examples of data practices instead of legal speak.
Referring to that, the company listed the following updates:
"Clear Redesign: We've redesigned and rewritten our Privacy Policy to make it both easier to understand and easier for people to access the controls we offer to manage their privacy.
Updated Controls: We've added more detail about how we use and share information with third parties and have introduced new controls to manage who sees peoples' posts and the topics users want to see ads about.
Central Location: Our new Privacy Center now supports the Privacy Policy, making it more readily available and easier to access alongside Meta privacy tools."
