Meta shifts UK users to US agreements in post-Brexit move

Bloomberg

Meta Platforms Inc. will begin moving its UK users away from the company’s Irish subsidiary and onto US agreements in a move the social-media giant flagged post-Brexit.
The company was expected to update terms of service for UK Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users on Tuesday and customers will be notified in the coming weeks, Menlo Park, California-based Meta said in a statement.
Meta, which initially announced the plans in 2020, said that the updates don’t change the way the company treats user data and that its operations in the UK are still subject to UK privacy and data protection laws. The new terms also don’t expand data sharing between Meta and WhatsApp, its encrypted chat app, it said.
Still, the updates will move UK users and their agreements with Meta outside of the European Union’s jurisdiction. After leaving the EU, Britain kept the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation, one of the most stringent privacy regimes. But Britain now “has the independence to keep the framework under review,” according to its data watchdog.
“Like other companies, we’ve made changes in response to the UK leaving the European Union,” a Meta spokeswoman said by email. “UK users remain protected by UK privacy and data protection laws. We’re not making any changes to the way our products work and the updates to our terms and privacy policies don’t change the way we treat UK users’ data.”