Image: Meta
Meta will now let you block Instagram from collecting your data across the apps and websites you visit. The company says that it’s expanding the ability to disable this kind of tracking to Instagram, allowing you to review which businesses are sharing information with Meta, disconnect specific activity, or clear the collected information.
You can now find this feature, called Activity Off-Meta Technologies, within the platform’s Accounts Center. It was previously only available for Facebook. Meta receives information from third-party websites that use its business tools, such as the Meta Pixel, which tracks users on the web and allows Meta to serve personalized ads on its platforms.
Image: Meta
You can now download information from Facebook and Instagram accounts at the same time.
Meta announced a few other features coming to the Accounts Center as well, including a way to transfer your photos and videos from Instagram to other services. It’s not clear which specific services you can transfer your information to, but Meta cites an example of using a third-party service to create and print a photo album with pictures from Instagram. The Verge reached out to Meta for more information about this but didn’t immediately hear back.
Additionally, you can now download information from both your Facebook and Instagram accounts at the same time. Meta previously only let you download information separately, which you can still choose to do.
Meta first introduced the revamped Accounts Center in January, offering a central hub that lets you control settings across your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts. The company has also been tweaking its approach to ads by offering more transparency about why you’re seeing certain ads and launching a new ad distribution system in response to claims it enabled housing discrimination. Meta is also contending with the new rules it must comply with in the European Union and may even make highly targeted ads opt-in in the region.
