Facebook Adds a New Feature ‘Limited Data Use’ Setting to Help Businesses Comply with CCPA

With California’s new data-privacy laws going into effect earlier this year (and the six-month grace period for compliance about to come to an end), Facebook is looking to help businesses better manage their obligations under the CCPA by adding a new feature that will limit data usage for Californian residents.

As per Facebook:

“To support businesses with their compliance efforts, we’re introducing a new feature business can use to limit how we use the data they send to Facebook, called Limited Data Use. When a business applies this feature, it will direct Facebook to process information about people in California as the business’s Service Provider. That means we will limit how this information is processed as specified in our State-Specific Terms.”

The option means that businesses can either inform Facebook when a person in California has opted out of data usage, or they can rely on Facebook to determine a users’ location and omit Californian residents from data sharing.

“When Limited Data Use is enabled, businesses may notice an impact on campaign performance and effectiveness, and retargeting and measurement capabilities will be limited.”

CCPA, which provides more protection for personal data, complicates things for digital platforms, as they now need separate parameters for users in different regions. Though, of course, European users now come under the GDPR, which institutes separate, regional data protections already, so such changes are not unprecedented.

Facebook says that there’ll be an initial transition period within which it will automatically limit how it uses data businesses to send about people in California. After that, businesses will need to implement features if they want to alter their data usage restrictions.

“The transition period will vary depending on the product, but for most Business Tools it will last until July 31.”

Essentially, if you’re unsure of your obligations, the ‘Limit Data Use’ option will mean that Facebook restricts data usage for Californian residents.

You can read more about the update here.