Meta Replaces Off-Facebook Activity With Weaker Control

Meta is removing its Off-Facebook Activity privacy setting in July and replacing it with Activity from other businesses, which only lets users control whether their off-platform data personalises ads and content — not whether Meta retains it.

Meta is removing the Off-Facebook Activity privacy setting in July, and the replacement does less. The old control let you disconnect and anonymise the browsing and purchase data that other apps and websites send to Meta. The new one — called Activity from other businesses — only lets you decide whether Meta uses that data to personalise ads and content. It can still receive it, hold it, and anonymise it regardless of what you pick. The change starts in the US and “a number of other countries” in July, and Meta says no new data is being collected.

That distinction is the whole story, so let’s be clear about it. According to Meta’s June 9 announcement, the company is folding two overlapping settings into one. The setting being scrapped — most recently labelled “Your activity off Meta technologies” — was the one that stopped Meta from associating off-platform data with your account. The one that survives never did that. As reported by PCMag, Facebook users have been seeing “Your settings are changing” banners and getting emails spelling out the switch.

What is changing

You are losing the ability to disconnect off-platform data from your account, and keeping only a switch over whether that data personalises what you see. The notification Meta sent to users puts it plainly: “The setting to disconnect your off-Meta activity is going away. You can use the updated Activity from other businesses setting to choose if we use your activity from other apps, websites or offline interactions, such as in-store purchases, to show you relevant ads and now other content.”

The thing is, those two settings were never equivalent. One controlled retention. The other controls use. Meta is presenting the removal of the stronger one as housekeeping. In its words: “Instead of maintaining two settings that cover similar ground, we’re streamlining our controls and will no longer offer the ‘Your activity off Meta technologies’ setting that lets you disconnect activity that businesses share with us from your account.”

Streamlining usually means making something simpler. Here it means making something weaker, then describing the result as simpler. Both things can be true at once.

Will Meta still collect your data if you opt out

Yes. Opting out of the new setting changes how your off-platform data is used, not whether Meta holds it. The company’s own support note is explicit: “If you don’t allow us to use this activity to show you more relevant content, the content we show you will be based on other types of information we collect, such as your activity on our products (for example, liking a reel or post). Regardless of your choice, businesses and organizations may send us your activity, and we may anonymize it or use it to improve our products as described in our Privacy Policy.”

Read that last line twice. “Regardless of your choice” is doing a lot of work. Under the old setting, opting out meant Meta removed your identifying information and didn’t use the disconnected data for ads. Under the new one, businesses keep sending your activity, Meta keeps it, and your only lever is personalisation. When PCMag asked Meta spokesperson Emil Vazquez whether that was a correct reading, he pointed back to the June 9 announcement instead of disputing it.

How the new setting compares to the old one

The short version: the old setting could stop Meta retaining your off-platform data; the new one cannot. Here is the side-by-side.

Feature	Off-Facebook Activity (old)	Activity from other businesses (new)
What it controls	Whether Meta associates third-party data with your account	Whether Meta uses third-party data to personalise your experience
Can you stop Meta retaining the data?	Yes — data was anonymised and disconnected	No — Meta retains the data regardless of your choice
Ad targeting impact	Opting out prevented use of off-platform data for ads	Opting out limits personalisation; Meta may still use data to improve products
Launched	September 2019 (US), January 2020 (worldwide)	July (US and select countries)
Setting location	Your information and permissions	Your information and permissions

The promise Meta made in 2019

Off-Facebook Activity launched in September 2019 as a deliberate trade of ad revenue for user trust — which makes its removal worth quoting against the original pitch. Back then, the company (still called Facebook) said: “If you clear your off-Facebook activity, we’ll remove your identifying information from the data that apps and websites choose to send us. We won’t know which websites you visited or what you did there, and we won’t use any of the data you disconnect to target ads to you on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger. We expect this could have some impact on our business, but we believe giving people control over their data is more important.”

“We expect this could have some impact on our business, but we believe giving people control over their data is more important.” Seven years later, the impact-on-business part appears to have won the argument. The feature first appeared more than a year after Facebook announced the idea, then rolled out worldwide in January 2020. Now it’s being unwound and reframed as a convenience.

How to find the new setting

You can adjust the replacement control in your account settings. According to Meta’s notification, go to Your information and permissions in your account settings, where you’ll find the updated Activity from other businesses option. That’s also where Off-Facebook Activity used to live, so the path hasn’t moved — only what the switch does.

Turning it off still has a point. It stops Meta using your off-platform activity to personalise ads and content, which is not nothing if targeted ads are what bother you. Just don’t mistake it for the old guarantee. It no longer prevents Meta from holding the data in the first place.

Does this apply in the UAE

Unconfirmed. Meta says the change takes effect in July across the US and “a number of other countries,” and the announcement does not name which ones. There is no UAE-specific rollout date, exemption, or guidance in the source, and Meta has not said whether the country is in the first wave or a later one. The exact July date isn’t specified either.

For UAE readers, that matters because Facebook and Instagram are everywhere here — personal accounts, small-business pages, ad campaigns. If you previously opted out of off-platform tracking to keep targeted ads at bay, the protection you chose is being narrowed, and you may not get a separate heads-up about when. Meta has rolled out plenty of other changes lately, from paid subscriptions across its apps to a new Reddit-style Forum app — but this one quietly subtracts instead of adding.

If you’re a UAE user who cares about this, the practical move is the same regardless of timing: check Your information and permissions now, set Activity from other businesses to off if you want to limit personalisation, and treat it as a use control instead of a privacy shield. That’s what it is now.