Facebook to extend GDPR data protection changes to global users

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg intends to implement the EU’s forthcoming data protection changes worldwide, rather than confining them to European users of its platform. Fresh from its own data misuse scandal, Facebook has announced a string of changes to its data policy, and has also committed to rolling out GDPR to apply to all citizens. After the social network appeared in news reports yesterday under headlines suggesting it wouldn’t extend the new protections to US citizens, Zuckerberg since clarified his remarks in a press conference confirming his company would in fact introduce equivalent safeguards for all users. Facebook has toughened up its data protection policy following reports that a data modelling company called Cambridge Analytica had collected millions of Facebook users’ profile data to help influence voters ahead of the US presidential election in 2016. The company in fact harvested up to 87 million users’ data, according to Facebook’s best estimates, via a university professor’s quiz app that was able to access users’ friends’ profile data as well, under platform rules that existed in 2015 (and have since changed to prevent this). Details about how Facebook will roll out GDPR globally, and a timeline for doing so, are yet to emerge. The UK is currently passing a new Data Protection Act to ensure GDPR-style legislation is replicated in native law before the UK leaves the EU.