Meta's policy update expands AI use and legal transparency, but lacks clear user controls for AI training and content ownership, raising privacy concerns.
AI Analysis
Meta's policy update expands AI use and legal transparency, but lacks clear user controls for AI training and content ownership, raising privacy concerns.
Expanded AI use for content creation, personalization, and offering AI tech to third parties.
Increased transparency on legal bases, citing specific EU and Irish regulations for data processing.
New clauses explicitly address safeguards and well-being for users under the age of majority.
No explicit opt-out for user data being used to train Meta's AI models is provided.
Why this score
Broad AI data collection for training without explicit user opt-out.-1.5
Ambiguous ownership of user-generated content created with Meta's AI.-0.5
Enhanced legal transparency for EU users, detailing specific compliance obligations.+1
What changed
## Privacy Policy
### Highlights
- Seeing if our Products are working correctly, such as troubleshooting, and fixing it when it’s not working
- - Personalizing features, content and recommendations, such as your Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, AI at Meta, Stories and ads.
+ - Personalizing features, content and recommendations, such as your Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, AI at Meta, Stories and ads (if we show you ads).
- To promote safety, security and integrity and comply with applicable laws
- - To personalize offers, ads and other sponsored or commercial content
- To develop, provide and personalize features and integrations
+ - To provide optional features and integrations
- To understand how people use and interact with Meta Company Products
- If we need it to operate or provide our Products. For example, we need to keep some of your information to maintain your account. Learn more.
- The feature we use it for, and how that feature works. For example, messages sent using Messenger’s vanish mode are retained for less time than regular messages. Learn more.
- How long we need to retain the information to comply with certain legal obligations. See some examples.
- If we need it for other legitimate purposes, such as to prevent harm; investigate possible violations of our terms or policies; promote safety, security and integrity; or protect ourselves, including our rights, property or products
- In response to legal requests, like search warrants, court orders, production orders or subpoenas. These requests come from third parties such as civil litigants, law enforcement and other government authorities. Learn more about when we respond to legal requests.
- In accordance with applicable law
- To promote the safety, security and integrity of Meta Products, users, employees, property and the public. Learn more.
- - Personalize features and content (such as your Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, AI at Meta and Stories);
- Personalize the ads people see, and
- Make suggestions for you (such as people you may know, groups or events that you may be interested in or topics that you may want to follow) on and off our Products.
+ - Any information with special protections that you choose to provide, such as your religious views, your sexual orientation, political views, health, racial or ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, or as part of surveys you choose to participate in, and where you have given your explicit consent
- Content that you create, such as posts, comments or audio
- Content that you provide through our camera feature or your camera roll settings, or through our voice-enabled features
- Metadata about content
- Types of content, including ads, that you view or interact with, and how you interact with it
- Apps and features that you use and what actions you take in them
- Purchases or other transactions that you make
- Hashtags you use
- The time, frequency and duration of your activities on our Products
- Device characteristics and device software
- What you're doing on your device, such as whether our app is in the foreground or if your mouse is moving (which can help tell humans from bots)
- Identifiers that tell your device apart from other users'
- Device signals
- Information that you've shared through your device settings (e.g. GPS location)
- Information about the network that you connect your device to
- Location-related information
- Reports about our Products' performance on your device
- Information from cookies and similar technologies
- Content you create, like posts, comments or audio
- Content you provide through our camera feature or your camera roll settings, or through our voice-enabled features
- - Metadata about content
- Interactions with AI at Meta and related metadata. For example, information you or others exchange with AI at Meta like content and messages
- Types of content you view or interact with, and how you interact with it
- Apps and features you use, and what actions you take in them
- Purchases or other transactions you make
- - Hashtags you use
- The time, frequency and duration of your activities on our Products
- Device characteristics and device software
+ - What you're doing on your device, like whether our app is in the foreground or if your mouse is moving (which can help tell humans from bots)
- Information you've shared through your device settings
- Information about the network you connect your device to and your connection, including your IP address
- Content you create, like your contact, profile or other information, like posts or comments
- Information from device settings
- Your account information, account photos, or
- your photo or video selfie, if you choose to provide it
- Personalise features and content (such as your Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed and Stories); and
- Make suggestions for you (such as people you may know, groups or events that you may be interested in or topics that you may want to follow) on and off our Products.
- Messages you send and receive, including their content and metadata, for optional features you choose to use, and subject to applicable law.
- What you’re doing on your device, like whether our app is in the foreground or if your mouse is moving (which can help tell humans from bots)
- Identifiers that tell your device apart from other users’
- - Device signals
- Information you’ve shared through your device settings (like GPS location)
- - Location-related information
- Information about the network you connect your device to
- - Reports about our products’ performance on your device
- Information from cookies and similar technologies
- To associate your accounts on Meta Company Products with your WhatsApp account in the same Accounts Center and share your information with WhatsApp.
+ - Reports about our Products’ performance on your device
- Create and maintain your account and profile,
- Connect your Meta Products account, including your public profile information, to an integrated partner to sign in or share your information,
- Facilitate the sharing of content and status,
- Provide and curate features,
- Provide messaging services, the ability to make voice and video calls and connect with others,
- - Provide advertising products,
- Understand and enable creation of content like text, audio, images and videos, including through AI at Meta,
+ - Provide and curate AI at Meta in our Products, enabling the creation of content like text, audio, images and videos, including by understanding and recognising your use of content in the features,
- Undertake analytics,
- - Facilitate your purchases and payments on Meta Pay or other Meta checkout experiences, and
- See if our Products are working correctly, such as troubleshooting, and fixing it when it’s not working.
- Develop and improve products and features,
- Build and test out new products and features to see if they work,
- Get feedback on our ideas for products or features, and
- Conduct surveys and other research about what you like about our Products and brands and on what we can do better for Meta Products and brands.
+ - Facilitate your purchases and payments on Meta Pay or other Meta checkout experiences,
- See if our Products are working correctly, such as troubleshooting, and fixing it when it’s not working,
- Build and test out new products and features to see if they work, and
- Get feedback on Meta Products and ideas for products or features
- Your public profile information (including your name, username and profile picture)
- Messages you send and receive, including their content, subject to applicable law
- - Metadata about content and messages, subject to applicable law
+ - Metadata about content and messages
- Purchases or other transactions you make, including truncated credit card information
- Your photo or video selfie if you provide it when you contact us for account support
- Information you’ve shared through your device settings
- Information about the network you connect your device to, including your IP address
- - Public content you or others create or share, like posts, comments or audio on Meta Products
- Interactions with AI at Meta and related metadata. For example, information you or others exchange with AI at Meta like content and messages.
- Verify accounts and activity,
+ - Verify accounts, identity and activity,
- Find and address violations of our terms or policies. In some cases, the decisions we make about violations are reviewed by the Oversight Board,
- Investigate suspicious activity,
- Detect, prevent and combat harmful or unlawful behavior, such as to review and, in some cases, remove content reported to us,
- - Identify and combat disparities and racial bias against historically marginalized communities,
- Protect the life, physical or mental health, well-being or integrity of our users or others,
- Detect and prevent spam, other security matters and other bad experiences,
+ - Detect and prevent spam and other bad experiences,
- Detect and stop threats to our personnel and property, and
- Maintain the integrity of our Products.
- We’ll contact you via email or in-product notifications in relation to the Meta Products, product-related issues, research or to let you know about our terms and policies.
- Contact information on your profile and your communications with us
- - Information from cookies and similar technologies.
- To operate and provide the services described in the terms that apply to the Meta Product(s) you are using. This includes allowing you to share information and connect with your family and friends around the globe; and
- To fix, analyze and improve our Products.
- Any information with special protections that you choose to provide, such as your religious views, your sexual orientation, political views, health, racial or ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, or as part of surveys you choose to participate in, and where you have given your explicit consent
- Information and content you provide, such as your name or email address
- We share your email (or other contact information) or other information you might choose when you direct us to share it with an advertiser so they can contact you with additional information about a promoted product, and
- If you choose to integrate other apps, games or websites with Meta Products and log in, we’ll share your information with the app, game or website to log you in.
- Information such as your contact or profile information
- Content you create, like posts or comments
- Provide insights and measurement reports to businesses, advertisers and other partners to help them measure the effectiveness and distribution of their or their clients’ ads, content and services, to understand the kinds of people who are seeing their content and ads, and how their content and ads are performing on and off Meta Products, and
- Provide aggregated user analytics and insights reports that help users, businesses, advertisers and other partners better understand the audiences with whom they may want to connect, as well as the types of people who use their services and how people interact with their content, websites, apps and services.
+ - Operate and provide the services described in the terms that apply to the Meta Product(s) you are using. This includes allowing you to share information and connect with your family and friends around the globe; and
- So we can fix, analyze and improve our Products.
- Civil and commercial matters: where we are in receipt of a court order or otherwise required to disclose information for the purposes of court proceedings, such as under Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters.
- Criminal matters: to comply with requests from Irish law enforcement to provide information in relation to an investigation, such as under Section 10 of the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1997 as amended by 6(1)(a) of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, or to take steps to report information to law enforcement where required.
- Consumer matters: to comply with our obligations under consumer law such as the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014.
- Corporate and taxation matters: to comply with our obligations such as the Companies Act 2014.
- Regulatory matters: to comply with our obligations to engage with regulators, such as the Data Protection Commission under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
- Financial matters: to comply with our obligations under applicable financial services law such as the European Union (Payment Services) Regulations 2018
- Access matters: to provide data to public sector bodies, the EU Commission, EU Central Bank or other EU bodies upon request from them, to provide data to you or your requested third party when requested by you, for example under EU Regulation 2023/2854 (Data Act)
- Personalise features and content (such as your News Feed, Instagram Feed and Stories),
- To create, provide, support and maintain innovative products and features that enable people under the age of majority to express themselves, communicate, discover and engage with information and communities relevant to their interests, build community and utilise tools and features that promote their well-being.
- To share meaningful updates with our users under the age of majority about our Products and promoting our Products.
- To provide, personalize and improve the Meta Products in a consistent manner while ensuring additional safeguards for those under their Member State's age of consent.
- The legitimate interest of our users in being able to access the Meta Products and those Products being personalised to each user.
- Provide advertising products,
- Provide and curate AI at Meta in our Products, enabling the creation of content like text, audio, images and videos, including by understanding and recognising your use of content in the features
- Undertake analytics, and
- See if our Products are working correctly, such as troubleshooting, and fixing it when it’s not working.
- Develop and improve products and features
- Build and test out new products and features to see if they work,
- Get feedback on our ideas for products or features, and
- Conduct surveys and other research on what we can do better for Meta Products and brands.
- In our interest to create, provide, support and maintain innovative products and features that enable people under the age of majority to express themselves, communicate, discover and engage with information and communities relevant to their interests, build community and utilise tools and features that promote their well-being.
- In our interest and those of our users to enable people under the age of majority to use and connect to the Meta Products in an easy and intuitive manner.
- In our interest to provide, personalize and improve Meta Products while ensuring additional safeguards for those under the age of consent.
- In the interests of our users, businesses and other third parties to access and benefit from Meta Products.
- Verify accounts and activity,
- Detect, prevent and combat harmful or unlawful behavior, such as to review, and in some cases remove, content reported to us,
- To secure our platform and network, to verify accounts and activity, to combat harmful conduct, to detect, prevent, and address spam and other bad experiences, to keep the Meta Products free of harmful or inappropriate content, to investigate suspicious activity or breaches of our terms or policies, and to protect the safety of people under the age of majority, including to prevent exploitation or other harms to which such individuals may be particularly vulnerable.
- In the interests of our users and the public at large, to prevent bad experiences and promote safety, integrity and security.
- Provide insights and measurement reports to businesses, and other partners to help them measure the effectiveness and distribution of their, or their client's content and services, to understand the kinds of people who are seeing their content and how their content is performing on and off the Meta Products, and
- Provide aggregated user analytics and insights reports that help users, businesses, and other partners better understand things like the audiences with whom they may want to connect, as well as the types of people who use their products and services and how people interact with their content, websites, apps, products and services, including to connect to Meta Products, and the performance of their connection and networks and users’ experience with them.
- In our interest to provide accurate and reliable reporting to our businesses, and other partners, to ensure accurate pricing and statistics on performance and to demonstrate the value that our partners realise using Meta Company Products, and to provide suitable payment and billing options to our other partners; and
- In the interests of developers and other partners to help them understand their customers and improve their businesses, validate our pricing models and evaluate the effectiveness of their products, services, online content on and off the Meta Company Products.
- Identifiers that tell your device apart from other users
- - To provide a seamless, consistent and richer, innovative experience across the Meta Company Products to enable cross app interactions, sharing, viewing and engaging with content, including posts and videos.
- Identifiers that tell your device apart from other users'
+ - Provide insights and measurement reports to businesses, advertisers and other partners to help them measure the effectiveness and distribution of their, or their client's ads, content and services, to understand the kinds of people who are seeing their content and ads, and how their content and ads are performing on and off the Meta Company Products, and
- Provide aggregated user analytics and insights reports that help businesses, advertisers and other partners better understand things like the audiences with whom they may want to connect, as well as the types of people who use their products and services and how people interact with their websites, apps, products and services, including to connect to Meta Products, and the performance of their connection and networks and users’ experience with them.
- In our interest to provide accurate and reliable reporting to our businesses, advertisers, and other partners, to ensure accurate pricing and statistics on performance and to demonstrate the value that our partners realize using Meta Company Products, and to provide suitable payment and billing options to our advertisers and other partners; and
- In the interests of advertisers, developers and other partners to help them understand their customers and improve their businesses, validate our pricing models and evaluate the effectiveness of their products, services, online content and advertising on and off the Meta Company Products.
- In our interest, and in the interests of users and third parties to create, provide, support, improve and maintain artificial intelligence technology that enables people, businesses and others to express themselves, communicate, and discover and engage with information they’re interested in.
- In our interest, and in the interests of third parties and the public at large to offer artificial intelligence technology to third parties, including developers and researchers.
- In our interest, and in the interests of users and third parties to develop and improve artificial intelligence technology while ensuring appropriate safeguards, such as improving model responses for safety and accuracy.
- Conduct research and analytics to evaluate the impact of new products and features,
- In our interest to create, provide, support, improve and maintain Meta Products that enable people, businesses and others to access new and innovative features to express themselves, communicate, and discover and engage with information they’re interested in.
- In our interest to evaluate the use of Meta Products and adoption of new features to inform the development of future features and improve product direction and development.
- In our interest to develop and improve Meta Products while ensuring appropriate safeguards.
- In the interests of users, businesses and other third parties to access and benefit from Meta Products that have new and innovative features.
- Your public information (including your name, username and profile picture)
- Messages you send and receive, including their content, subject to applicable law.
- To provide a seamless, consistent and richer, innovative, experience across the Meta Company Products and to enable cross app interactions, sharing, viewing and engaging with content, including posts and videos.
- To understand, in aggregate, your usage of and across our Products, to accurately count people and businesses; and
- - To validate metrics directly related to these, in order to inform and improve product direction and development and to adhere to (shareholder/earning) reporting obligations.
- When we show you ads through Meta Audience Network when you visit other apps, our systems automatically process the information we have collected and stored about you and others to identify you as a Meta Product user and tailor the ads you see.
- Information you provide
- Depending on your settings and subject to applicable law, we’ll share marketing communications with you.
- We’ll collect and store your information and use it to send marketing communications to you, like an email, subject to applicable laws.
- Information and content you provide, including your contact information like email address
+ - Validate metrics directly related to these, in order to inform and improve product direction and development and to adhere to (shareholder/earning) reporting obligations.
- Depending on your settings, we’ll share marketing communications with you.
- We’ll collect and store your information and use it to send marketing communications to you, like an e-mail.
- Information and content you provide, including your contact information like e-mail address
- Device identifiers
- We carry out surveys and use information (including from researchers we collaborate with) to conduct and support research and innovation on topics of general social welfare, technological advancement, public interest, health and well-being.
- - For example, we analyze information that we have about migration patterns during crises. This helps relief organizations get aid to the right places.
- We collect, store, combine, analyze and apply automatic processing techniques like aggregation of information as well as manual (human) review, and share information, as necessary to research and innovate for social good in this way.
+ - For example, we analyse information that we have about migration patterns during crises. This helps relief organizations get aid to the right places.
- We collect, store, combine, analyse and apply automatic processing techniques like aggregation of information as well as manual (human) review, and share information, as necessary to research and innovate for social good in this way.
- We support research in areas like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
- - In response to legal requests from third parties such as civil litigants, law enforcement and other government authorities
- To comply with applicable law or legitimate legal purposes
- To promote the safety, security and integrity of Meta Companies, Meta Products, users, employees, property and the public
- Metadata about content, subject to applicable law+ - In our interest to fund our provision of the Meta Products, provide relevant advertising to users, and improve ads delivery and Meta Products;
- In the interests of advertisers to help them to reach relevant audiences who may be interested in their information, products or services;
- In the interests of users that Meta practice data minimisation and privacy by design in respect of their information
- In response to legal requests from third parties such as civil litigants, law enforcement and other government authorities.
- To comply with applicable law or legitimate legal purposes.
- To promote the safety, security and integrity of Meta, Meta Products, Products, users, employees, property and the public.
- Our Meta Products are delivered to ensure the safety, integrity and security of those services and those people who enjoy them.
- We apply automated processing, as well as manual (human) review to verify accounts and activity, combat harmful conduct, detect and prevent spam and other security matters as well as bad experiences of other types, maintain the integrity of our Products, and promote safety, integrity and security on and off Meta Products.
- For example, we use information that we have to investigate suspicious activity or breaches of our terms or policies, or to detect when someone needs help.
- In our interest to secure our platform and network, to verify accounts and activity, to combat harmful conduct, to detect, prevent, and address spam and other bad experiences, to keep the Meta Company Products free of harmful or inappropriate content, and to investigate and take action in respect of suspicious activity or breaches of our terms or policies; and
- To deliver quality experiences to users who use our partners’ apps, in our best interest and in the interest of our users.
- To facilitate and improve users' experiences in their apps, in the interests of our partners who want to facilitate and improve consumers' experiences in their apps.
- Public content you or others create or share, like posts, comments or audio on Meta Products.
- Our Meta Products are delivered in a manner to ensure the safety, integrity and security of those services and those people who enjoy them.
- We collect and store information we have for this purpose and apply automated processing and manual (i.e. human) review to verify accounts and activity, combat harmful conduct, detect and prevent spam and other security matters as well as bad experiences of other types, maintain the integrity of our Products, and research and promote safety, integrity and security on and off Meta Products.
- In the interests of our users generally and the public at large, to prevent bad experiences and promote safety, integrity and security.
- Information and content you provide including your contact information like your e-mail address
- We carry out surveys and use information (including from research partners we collaborate with) to conduct and support research and innovation on topics of general social welfare, technological advancement, public interest, health and well-being.
- We collect, store, combine, analyse and apply automatic processing techniques like aggregation to information as well as manual (human) review as necessary to research and innovate for social good in this way.
- Provide products and curate features
- See if our Products are working correctly, such as troubleshooting, and fixing it when it’s not working
- Test out new products and features to see if they work
- Get feedback on our ideas for products or features
- Conduct surveys and other research on what we can do better for Meta Products and brands
- In our interests, and in the interests of users and third parties to create, provide, support, improve and maintain artificial intelligence technology that enables people, businesses and others to express themselves, communicate, and discover and engage with information they’re interested in.
- In our interests, and in the interests of third parties and the public at large to offer artificial intelligence technology to third parties, including developers and researchers.
- In our interests, and in the interests of users and third parties to develop and improve artificial intelligence technology while ensuring appropriate safeguards, such as improving model responses for safety and accuracy.
- Public content that you or others create or share, like posts, comments or audio on Meta Products.
Regional impact
EUMedium
The policy offers greater transparency on legal bases, aligning with GDPR requirements. However, expanded AI use without clear opt-out for training data raises concerns under the upcoming AI Act and existing data protect
USMedium
Broad data collection and sharing practices persist, impacting user privacy under CCPA/CPRA. The expanded AI use, without explicit opt-out for training, could lead to new privacy challenges as state AI regulations emerge
GlobalHigh
The policy's global reach means expanded AI data collection affects users worldwide, regardless of local regulations. Cross-border data transfers remain unrestricted, posing consistent privacy risks for individuals.