Facebook plans to shift UK users to California

The changes will move British users outside the scope of the EU privacy laws

Facebook will move millions of UK users from their current relationship with Facebook's Irish unit to a new user agreement with the company's Californian headquarters.

That's according to Reuters, which says the company will notify UK users in the first half of 2021 through an update to Facebook's terms of service - offering them the 'option' to stop using Facebook's services (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) if they're not satisfied with the legal move.

The changes are expected to come into effect next year.

"Like other companies, Facebook has had to make changes to respond to Brexit and will be transferring legal responsibilities and obligations for UK users from Facebook Ireland to Facebook Inc," Facebook told Reuters.

The company added that there will be no change to the privacy controls or the services offered to UK users.

Ireland, where Facebook has its European headquarters, is still a member of the European Union, where the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - one of the toughest data protection rules in the world - holds sway.

Following the UK's exit from the EU, the relationship between Facebook's UK users and the company's Irish headquarters will come to an end.

Facebook says it UK users will remain subject to UK privacy law, which will still essentially follow the GDPR. But, privacy advocates are worried that the UK may move to a weaker data privacy regime in the future, in exchange for trade deals with other countries.

Specifically, they believe Britain could sign a data deal with the USA, which has weaker privacy laws, despite years of advocacy by consumer protection groups. The USA passed the Cloud Act in 2018, which could make it easier for the authorities in the two countries to access data stored by digital service providers in each other's territory.

Jim Killock, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, told Reuters, "The bigger the company, the more personal data they hold, the more they are likely to be subject to surveillance duties or requirements to hand over data to the US government."

Facebook's decision to shift UK users to US user agreements follows a similar move by Google earlier this year.

In February, Google announced plans to move its British users' accounts out of the control of EU privacy regulators and put them under US jurisdiction instead.

The company said that it would not make any changes to its data protection standards for UK users, and stressed there would be no changes to privacy settings or how it processes user data.