Meta Launches Centralized Data Privacy and Ad Targeting Controls for Facebook, IG and Messenger

Meta has announced a new update for its Accounts Center tool, which will make it much easier to manage your privacy settings across Facebook, Messenger and Instagram in one place.

The updated Accounts Center will include all of your info from all three apps – including personal details, passwords and security, and ad preferences – in a single place, which will better enable you to review and update your preferences without having to go to separate elements within each.

As per Meta:

“For example, you can now easily make your ad topic preferences consistent for Facebook and Instagram accounts by adding those accounts to the same Accounts Center.”

It’s a good way to help users manage their in-app experiences, and it makes a lot more sense to have all of this connected info in one space – though some may also see it as a risk, in that all of your combined info is listed in a single element.

Still, most users have now connected their Facebook and IG accounts anyway, so the technical linking is already in place. This will just make it a little easier to dictate your experiences across each without having to dig into each app’s settings.

Meta’s also updating its ad settings and controls along similar lines, providing more manual input into your experience.

“First, we’re updating our Data about your activity from Partners’ control, which is now called Activity information from ad partners to help people easily understand how their activity sent from other websites and apps is used to power the ads they see. Second, we’re making it easier for people to understand their options when it comes to seeing ads shown by Meta on other apps and websites. Finally, we know people want more control over the ads they see, which is why we’re exploring new ways to give people the ability to see more ads about the things that interest them, in addition to the existing option of seeing fewer ads about things that don’t interest them.”

So you’ll have more ways to dictate the ads that you’re shown, and how your data is used for ad targeting, across Meta’s apps.

It’s a handy update, which will make it easier for users to have more influence over their experience. Of course, the next challenge is then getting users to actually review such, but Meta can only add the tools. If users choose to use them or not is out of its hands.

Meta says that the changes will begin to go into effect today, and will gradually be rolled out to everyone with connected Facebook, Messenger and Instagram accounts ‘in the coming months’.