Having said it would follow GDPR โin spiritโ, Facebookโs actions tell a different story. On Wednesday Reuters reported that the company would change its terms of service so that its 1.5 billion non-European users would no longer be covered by the privacy law. Until now, all users outside of the US and Canada have been governed by terms of service agreed with the companyโs international headquarters in Ireland. Since any user data processed in Ireland will soon fall under GDPR, Facebook is changing the agreement so users in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America are governed by more lenient US privacy laws.
Where it needs to comply with GDPR, Facebook seems to have focused its efforts on getting user consent for its data collection practices () rather than reducing the data it collects. It has developed a sequence of consent requests that explicitly outline how each type of data will be used. However, as the company has designed these requests in a way that makes it harder to opt out than opt in.
