Facebook has decided on quite the way to convince people to
download Moments : by threatening to delete thousands of photos if
they don't.
The notice has to do with a photo syncing feature that was recently
removed from Facebook's main mobile app. Starting in 2012, the
Main Facebook app was able to automatically upload photos from a
phone's local camera roll to a private album on Facebook. They
were kept there for storage, but also to make it easier to later share
them publicly on Facebook.
That syncing tool has now been moved out of the core Facebook
app and into the photo app Moments . Facebook made it clear that
this would happen — and in fact it happened months back,
seemingly without much pushback. What Facebook was less clear
about was what would happen to photos that had previously been
Synced.
At the time, Facebook mentioned that people would be given the
chance to download their pictures in a zip file if they didn't want to
move over to Moments. Now it's clear that offering is because
Facebook intends to completely delete synced photos if people
don't download this new app. (This only applies to auto-synced
photos; not photos a person has personally uploaded.
While Facebook is giving people plenty of time to make the jump
over to Moments, it's being pretty shameless here about what's
going on.
Now you can perhaps argue that anyone actively using Facebook's
auto sync will have already downloaded Moments.. .
Like the person
in the tweet above, it's entirely possible that Facebook will be
removing photos that people forgot or didn't realize were synced.
But it's still, to say the least, not the kindest of tactics to delete
photos when Facebook certainly has the resources to go on storing
them. It's a blatantly aggressive push to get people to download
Moments, which Facebook seems to be hoping will be its next big
app.
This isn't the first time Facebook has been aggressive about
moving people to another of its apps. Two years ago, it removed
Messenger from the core Facebook app, requiring people to
download Messenger's own app to keep using it on mobile. That
was an annoying shift for some, but maybe not on quite the same
level as what it's doing for Moments — it's not like Facebook would
delete your chat account.
You can check the link below for more information.
Anyone who's used Facebook's auto sync feature in the past has
until July 7th to download Moments or a zip file of their synced
photos. Otherwise, they're going to disappear.
To be on the safe side just download the moments app.
