Privacy Policy Audit
Meta
Translation Service
What They Say
Meta's privacy policy presents data collection as a mutual arrangement — you get free services, connection with people you care about, and a platform to share your life. They describe their data use as enabling "meaningful connections" and "relevant experiences," and they include detailed sections on how you can manage your information. The policy references the importance of privacy approximately once per page, which is a lot of mentions for a company that has paid $5 billion in privacy fines.
What They Mean
Meta's business is knowing things about you that you have not consciously disclosed — your political anxieties, consumption habits, loneliness indicators, and psychological pressure points — and providing this knowledge to advertisers with unprecedented precision. The "off-Facebook activity" system means they track you on millions of third-party websites via embedded pixels, then match that data to your Facebook account. This happens whether you are logged in or not. The word "meaningful" in their policy is doing work that should require a union card.
Worst Clause — Exhibit A
"We receive information from third-party partners and combine it with information we have about you. Third-party partners share information with us in a variety of ways, such as when businesses use Facebook tools on their sites or apps, when they send information to us to reach their customers, or when they provide information to help Meta improve our services or target ads."
Bureau Translation:
Companies you have never heard of and whose websites you visited once in 2019 are actively sending your behaviour to Meta, who match it to your profile and update their model of who you are. You consented to this in the terms of service of those third-party sites, in the section labelled "Sharing with Partners," which you did not read, which is acceptable because it was written specifically to be unread.
Evidence Tags — Data Collected
Bureau Verdict
"The Meta privacy policy is a five-thousand-word argument for why what Meta does is fine. It is the most ambitious document in the Bureau's archive — technically accurate, legally defensible, and practically incomprehensible in its implications. Grade F+, with the plus awarded for the extraordinary craft of making surveillance feel like a subscription service for human connection."
Overall Grade
Technically Legible
Frequently Asked Questions
Dark Patterns Documented
See the full Dark Pattern Encyclopedia for documentation of each technique.
Audited: 2026-03-15