Meta Expands Off-Site Data Use to Feeds and AI Personalization
Meta announced on Tuesday that it will broaden its use of cross-site business data to personalize user experiences across Facebook and Instagram feeds, as well as responses generated by its AI chatbot. The expansion moves beyond the company's long-standing practice of using third-party data solely for targeted advertising. According to Meta, businesses routinely share information about user activity on their sites—such as online purchases, gaming behavior, and product browsing—to improve ad targeting. Going forward, that same data will inform content recommendations in users' Feeds and shape AI-generated responses from Meta's assistant.
The company stressed that no new data collection is occurring as part of the rollout. Users will retain control through an expanded "Activity from other businesses" setting, previously called "Activity information from ad partners." The older "Your activity off Meta technologies" setting will be discontinued, consolidating personalization preferences into a single dashboard. If users opt in, the system may surface more relevant content—for example, a recent tent purchase could trigger more camping-related Reels. If users opt out, recommendations will rely only on on-platform signals such as likes, follows, and post interactions. The change also affects how customer lists uploaded by businesses—such as email subscriber rosters—influence both ad and non-ad content delivery.
The update takes effect next month across the United States and a ten-country roster that includes the United Kingdom, Brazil, Thailand, South Africa, Turkey, South Korea, Ecuador, Nigeria, and Kenya. As cross-platform data-sharing practices continue to evolve, users concerned about their digital exposure can run a privacy checkup to identify what trackers follow them online, or use a browser fingerprint test to assess how identifiable their browser configuration is to advertising networks. Anyone whose email appears in business partner lists can also verify exposure with an email breach checker.