With the European Union’s new data protection laws coming into effect this year, Facebook has begun preparing for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by publishing its privacy principles for the first time.
The company also announced that it will push videos into users’ news feeds that detail how they can manage their privacy on the social network. And it recently revealed that later this year it plans to roll out a new privacy center that pulls together key settings into a single hub. “We’re designing this based on feedback from people, policymakers, and privacy experts around the world,” Facebook’s chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, said in a blog post.
The announcement was timed to coincide with Data Privacy Day, an occasion marked every January 28 to promote best practices around online data privacy and security. More importantly, the news comes just months before the impending GDPR laws are scheduled to come into effect across the EU on May 25, ushering in a new “unified” data protection regulatory framework that also promises to better protect residents’ personal data.
Facebook has published seven core privacy principles, which include helping users to understand how their data is used, designing privacy into Facebook products, and making it easier for users to delete personal information.
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“We recognize that people use Facebook to connect, but not everyone wants to share everything with everyone — including with us,” added Egan. “It’s important that you have choices when it comes to how your data is used. These are the principles that guide how we approach privacy at Facebook.”
Facebook doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to managing users’ (and non-users‘) information, but the GDPR stipulates that companies can be fined up to 4 percent of their global turnover if they are deemed to have contravened the new privacy standards. Facebook’s new promotional push is intended to demonstrate that it’s taking privacy concerns seriously. So you may start seeing Facebook blowing its own privacy trumpet in your news feed as part of its latest “educational” campaign.
