Facebook will not implement protections from EU privacy regulation worldwide

Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook does not intend to make the strict privacy rules of the upcoming privacy regulation the standard outside the EU. He does say that some of the privacy guarantees will also apply outside the EU.

In an interview with Reuters, Zuckerberg did not yet clarify which provisions of the privacy regulation will also be implemented worldwide. He said Facebook isn’t out yet, but the company will act “in the spirit of” the regulation.

The Privacy Regulation, also known as GDPR, is a range of new EU privacy rules that will come into effect on 25 May. The regulation entails both rights for citizens and obligations for organisations. In this way, people will soon be able to view, change, delete and take their personal data with them. In addition, organizations must keep a ‘privacy administration’, which states what kind of data is processed for what purpose and how it is secured.

Companies such as Apple, among others, have already implemented new privacy functionalities so that the company will also offer the same protections in the US, for example, that EU residents are entitled to. For example, Apple has made it easier to make copies of personal data, deactivate or delete accounts, or have data changed. It is not yet clear what Google will do outside the EU with regard to its commitment to the GDPR.