For the past few years at Meta, we’ve marked Data Privacy Day with a recap of our privacy highlights from the prior year. As we look back at our 2024 technology innovations, the common denominator across all of them is a strong privacy foundation. This foundation was only made possible by the profound progress we’ve made as a company during the last six years. In this post, I’d like to reflect on Meta’s privacy evolution during this time.
I’m reminded of the wise words of computer scientist Alan Kay: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” This principle captures Meta’s tenacious product culture – one that pushes us to solve hard problems and build experiences that once seemed like science fiction. Our approach to privacy is no different.
Today, as we work to build for the future of human connection, nearly four billion people across the globe use our products and services. We are keenly aware of the incredible opportunity and deep responsibility we have to manage privacy risk for our community; we’re upholding that by investing our vast engineering capabilities into building cutting-edge privacy technology. We are committed to this work as we help shape the future of data protection.
The last six years are a testament to this commitment. And they also represent the story of the more than 3,000 Meta employees and countless external experts who continue to support a world class privacy program that underlies each of our products and services and keeps people’s information safe.
The Catalyst for Change
The privacy infrastructure we have today is due, in large part, to the landmark agreement we reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2019. As part of that settlement, we agreed to pay a historic $5 billion fine, but even more importantly, it set us on a path to make major structural changes to our operating model and how we build products.
With a 180-day deadline, we established a new organization within the company to overhaul our privacy program. We seized the opportunity and worked with the best in the business to build a system that would set a new standard for data protection in our industry.
We had to get this right. That meant rebuilding trust with people and ensuring we embedded the right systems and the right levels of accountability into our product development and data handling processes. This includes oversight by an independent Assessor that is required to identify any gaps or weaknesses in our privacy program design and implementation. The Assessor’s feedback has been instrumental in accelerating our progress and demonstrating that our program is maturing and scaling as intended.
Innovating Amid Rapid Change
From the rollout of Oculus Go, our first standalone headset, to the evolution of artificial intelligence and the introduction of the metaverse, or wearables like Ray-Ban Stories (and eventually Orion), the pace of change has been breathtaking. And with it, we’ve rapidly and fundamentally shifted how we approach privacy.
At the same time, new technology gives rise to new regulations. Today, there are hundreds of data protection laws around the world. Our ability to compete and innovate hinges on how fast we adapt to the everchanging mosaic of legal requirements. That’s why we continue to work closely with regulators, policymakers and other experts to make sure our practices uphold the highest standards of data protection globally.
One example is Meta’s Reality Labs Policy Advisory Council. This group includes global experts–across a range of areas like privacy, youth, safety and accessibility – who advise and guide our product and policy development teams within Reality Labs.
And yet, despite these advances, the fundamental questions at the heart of privacy remain the same: How do we balance the benefits of technology with the need to protect personal information? How do we create a digital ecosystem that is both innovative and responsible?
These are the questions that have driven me throughout my tenure, and they are the questions that will continue to shape the future of our industry.
Profound Progress and Gratitude
We have made profound progress on privacy in a relatively short time. More importantly, our efforts have helped protect billions of people’s personal data.
Since 2019, we’ve invested more than $8 billion in rebuilding Meta’s privacy program and implementing sweeping changes to our data practices. We’ve also strengthened our privacy policies and built new tools to give people even more control of their experiences. Along the way, we’ve created a culture of rigor – one that leads us to push the boundaries of what’s possible and find more effective ways to protect user data.
And our product culture and privacy technology have evolved to make us faster, better and more agile. Today, privacy considerations are at the heart of our product development process, and privacy protections are built into each new innovation from the start.
Here are some highlights, some of which are explained in greater depth in this year’s annual Privacy Progress Update:
- We introduced Instagram Teen Accounts, a new experience for teens, guided by parents. Teen Accounts have built-in protections which limit who can contact teens and the content they see and provide new ways for teens to explore their interests.
- We have rolled out default end-to-end encryption for personal messages to the vast majority of our global users on Messenger, bringing additional privacy and security protections to billions of messages. We also introduced view-once functionality to Messenger, giving people the ability to send photos and videos that can only be viewed or replayed once and cannot be saved or screenshotted, ensuring additional privacy for in-the-moment messages.
- We launched a number of privacy features in our Quest line of mixed reality headsets. Beginning with Quest 3S, we introduced a privacy indicator that lets you know when privacy-related features are in use – and which apps in your library are using them.
- We continued to advance our Privacy Aware Infrastructure, which is crucial to enforcing end-user privacy protections with speed and accuracy at our scale. With this technology, we embed privacy rules directly into code to automate adherence to privacy requirements, which enables us to protect hundreds of millions of pieces of data.
- We made updates to Download Your Information to include data logs, giving people even more data about how they use Facebook. Data Logs include information about how and when you’ve viewed Facebook and recommendations we’ve made based on their activity.
Importantly, we’ve continued to enhance the rigor and speed of our Privacy Review efforts. Privacy Review helps us evaluate new features or data practices for potential privacy risks and develop mitigations to address those risks. Our Privacy Review efforts cover an average of 1,400 products, features and data practices every month. Building on this foundation, we’re leveraging the lessons we learned in building our privacy program to inform how we approach all product compliance efforts across Meta.
Looking Ahead with Optimism
Realizing our company’s mission requires trust – and we can achieve that only by meeting people’s expectations of how our products work and how we use their data, consistently and without making mistakes. The privacy program we’ve built helps us do just that.
We’ve made incredible advancements, but I’m proudest of the way we’ve approached these challenges as a team. We’ve brought together some of the brightest minds in the industry – engineers, lawyers, privacy experts, policy professionals and product designers – to build and scale solutions to the most complex privacy and regulatory compliance challenges, preparing us for tomorrow’s inventions.
Of course, there’s still much work to be done. The regulatory landscape continues to evolve, and new technologies will continue to present both new opportunities and challenges for privacy. I’m more confident than ever that we’re on the right path, and that the progress we’ve made over the past six years will serve as a foundation for even greater achievements in the years to come.