The code of conduct agreement was announced after Richard Allan, Facebook's director of European public policy, met last week with Germany's Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich in Berlin and a state parliamentary committee in Kiel, according to ZDNet.

"With Facebook's willingness to sign up for this self-regulation ... the debate over the extent to which German data protection law applies to Facebook has been considerably defused," the Interior Ministry said, according to German news website The Local.

Don't expect the tide to turn against Facebook in the U.S. anytime soon.

While have asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to bar Facebook from using facial recognition, American society continues to be quietly inoculated with the feature, with little substantive protest.

In fact, Facebook is far from the only company using it.