Meta has made changes to its privacy policy, which will come into effect from December 16. A misleading claim is going viral that Meta will read users’ private messages. Users are claiming that from December 16, META will start reading your DMs – every message, photo, and voice note will be fed into AI for profit. Under the new policy, META can use users’ private conversations to train its AI, unless you opt out yourself.
Sharing this claim, one user wrote:
“From December 16, META will start reading your DMs – every message, photo, and voice note will be fed into AI for profit. Meta is introducing a new policy that allows them to use your private conversations to train their AI – unless you opt out yourself. This means:
- Every DM you send
- Every photo
- Every voice memo
- Every private chat with friends, family, partners, and clients
- Even the messages people send you
All of this can be fed into their AI models. And yes – they’ve deliberately made the opt-out process confusing and desktop-only so that most people won’t do it. This video explains how to stop it. If you don’t do this, Meta can legally use everything private you’ve sent to train their AI from December 16. This is not a drill. Would you trust Meta with your private DMs?”
Several other users have also shared posts with this claim, which can be seen here and here.
Fact Check:
The DFRAC team’s investigation into the viral claim found that Meta’s new policy will come into effect from December 16, 2025. Meta’s proposed privacy policy has nothing to do with Direct Messages (DMs). The focus of this update is only on how Meta uses data from conversations with its generative AI, Meta AI. This means the changes are only to explain the use of data from Meta AI chats, not to access users’ private chats or DMs.
On October 1, 2025, Meta announced that it would update its privacy policy on December 16. According to information provided by Meta, the biggest change in this update is that Meta will now use users’ conversations with its generative AI features to personalize content and advertisement recommendations. This means data from your chats with Meta AI will be used to show you more relevant content and ads.
Meta stated: “1- We will begin personalizing content and ad recommendations on our platforms based on people’s conversations with our generative AI features.
2- We will begin notifying people about this update via in-product notifications and emails on October 7, 2025, several weeks before it takes effect on December 16, 2025.
3- With tools like Ad Preferences and other feed controls, you can adjust the content and ads you see at any time.”
Additionally, our team found media reports from Navbharat Times and Hindustan stating that from December 16, Meta will use data from conversations between users and AI. Based on this, users will be shown advertisements on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
We had a conversation with Meta India’s Strategic Partner Development Head, Trushar Barot, who confirmed that this news is misleading and referred us to Meta’s new press release clarifying its policies.
Conclusion:
DFRAC’s fact check makes it clear that Meta’s proposed privacy policy has nothing to do with Direct Messages (DMs). It does not make any changes to the use of users’ private chats or conversations. Under Meta’s new policy, data from conversations between users and AI will be used. Therefore, the social media users’ claim is misleading.
