Many applications and websites are free because they are supported by online advertising. To reach the people most likely to be interested in their products, companies often share data about people's interactions on their websites with advertising platforms and other services. This is how the internet works in most cases but given that, on average, people with smartphones have more than 80 apps and use around 40 each month, it can be really difficult for people to keep track of who has information about them. them and what they are used for. To help clarify these activities, which are common but not always well understood, today Facebook introduces a new way to see and control your business off-social.
The "Activity outside Facebook" function allows you to see a summary of the apps and websites that send information about your activities and, if you wish, to delete this information from your account. This is another way to give people more transparency and control on Facebook, along with recent updates to the Ads Library, updates to "Why am I seeing this ad?" and the launch of a new feature called "Why am I seeing this post?".
What are Activities outside of Facebook?
Imagine a clothing website wants to show ads to people interested in a new shoe model. The site can send information that someone, on a specific device, has searched for those shoes. If that information on the device matches someone's Facebook account, ads on those shoes will be shown to that person. To better explain this, they have put together some resources here.
With the new Activity Outside Facebook feature, you can see and control the data other apps and websites share with Facebook. You can:
- See a summary of the information that other apps and websites have sent to Facebook through Facebook Business Tools, such as Facebook Pixel or Facebook Login;
- Disconnect this information from your account if you wish;
- Choose to disconnect future activities outside of Facebook from your account. You can do this for all activities outside of Facebook or only for certain apps and websites we
Initially, this feature will gradually be available to people in Ireland, South Korea and Spain. They will continue to roll out it around the world over the next few months to ensure it works effectively for everyone.
What happens when you delete Activities outside of Facebook
If you clear your online history, identifying information will be removed from the data that apps and websites choose to send. Facebook will not know where you were or what actions you have taken on the internet and will not use any of the data you disconnect to show you ads on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger. Facebook thinks that giving people control of their data is important.
When you log into Activity Outside Facebook, you will see websites and apps that you have used regularly, but you may also see some services you don't recognize. For example, you might see a website you haven't visited but your friend has viewed on your mobile phone, or because you share your home computer with your partner and children. To try to answer the most frequently asked questions people might have, they've gathered some additional information in the Help Center.
Function development and future prospects
Since Activity Outside Facebook is a new tool, they couldn't follow any patterns. Engineering teams have designed a new way for our systems to process information. For months they have been researching for input from users, privacy advocates, politicians, advertisers and industry groups. They then made significant changes based on what they learned from these researches.
For example, several months into product development, people have been asking for a way to disconnect future online activities from individual businesses, rather than all at once. They also learned from privacy experts that it was important to be able to reconnect a specific application or website while keeping other future activities disabled. They created these options so that people could have a better product, even if that delayed the launch.
“As part of Unilever's Responsibility Framework, we are committed to creating a better digital ecosystem by working with our partners. The Off Facebook Activity tool aims to give people more transparency and control over their data, helping to improve their online experience. We support this step by Facebook and encourage them and all operators in the sector to continue on the path to restore trust in the advertising ecosystem “. Luis Di Como, EVP Global Media, Unilever
This feature marks an important step towards greater transparency and greater control, and Facebook says they will continue to improve it.
