Europe and the UK seem to be exempt from the changes. The key quote from the BBC article seem to be "Facebook says it does not use WhatsApp information for those kind of purposes (i.e. ads, --Ed.) in Europe, because of negotiations with European data protection bodies."

In practice, what does "negotiations" mean in this context ? Are Europeans clearly protected under European data protection laws (with the UK lumped only until the can be technically / legally separated once Brexit clears up) or is there a risk that these same changes will be eventually applied here too ?