8 ms·

Facebook threatens to delete synced photos if users don't download new photo app

105 points by guiseroom 10y ago

imgabe 10y ago
I'm pretty happy with my decision to keep Facebook apps off my phone. I'll check the mobile site once in a while to see the news feed, but that's it. Of course I have google backing everything up, so maybe that's not much better. Time to write a little script to routinely backup photos from there to my own hard drive.
- witty_username 10y ago
  Google Takeout might help: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
- swiley 10y ago
  Synching is great for backing things like photos up. Although that sounds like a one way thing that you could do with rsync.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  I personally just clean out my phone onto my computer once every few months and keep it there if I feel the urge to look at it. Once in a while I'll zip up anything I think I haven't backuped up (with generous overlap) and send it over to AWS Glacier. I've got 123 GB of data there and it cost me $0.84 a month. It'll be a bit of a pain to recover if I ever loose my local copies but I don't expect that to happen frequently.
jaitsu 10y ago
They seem to go about these things in the wrong way. Take Messenger for example, there was no good reason to remove access to this via a browser on mobile devices. I don't want to have to install an app for something that was previously available in a browser. If you can't provide me with all of the features of messenger in the browser then that's fine. I thought we were meant to be progressing towards a truly open web accessible to all, regardless of device. This is just another example of Facebook doing whatever they please just because they can. I wonder how long that will last until people start moving away from the platform.
- vwcx 10y ago
  I've never installed Facebook Messenger and only access facebook through a mobile browser. What functionality am I missing out on?
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    A recent TechCrunch article reported that the functionality that you use is going away. It's a hamfisted move. They abuse these apps to do something -- my wife tried the messenger app and discovered a noticeable loss of battery life. I think she uninstalled it within 24 hours.
    - notifier2050 10y ago
      I uninstalled both Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps from my Nexus 9 and it's become much faster. Can say that I am surprised.
    - parthdesai 10y ago
      For me personally, it has gone away. I used to own Moto g ( 1 gb ram version) so there was no way i could afford to have messenger and facebook app installed on my phone. I budged and installed messenger when i bought nexus 6P though.
      - zem 10y ago
        mbasic.facebook.com still has access to messages, if you want to uninstall messenger
        StavrosK 10y ago
        Thank you for that. I had told everyone to message me on WhatsApp, and resigned to just be ignoring their messages until I was at a computer again. This will help.
    - petecox 10y ago
      I tried the Facebook apps and they were slow, buggy and intrusive. Messaging from the mobile web page was fine... Message to monetizing corporations - Sorry, all I want is a 4.5" web page downscaled from 21". It's all just CSS, right? And this is why I signed up to the dream and bought a Mozilla device with Firefox OS; alas the hardware died around the time the OS was orphaned. I use a handful of apps on my phone regularly and they're mainly for metropolitan services and web pages that refuse to reskin their sites for small screens. Nothing that couldn't be accomplished in HTML5 and with decent coding would probably run better than the current impls.
swiley 10y ago
Go ahead! I don't keep anything on Facebook that I don't have locally.
- lewiscollard 10y ago
  That's nice. What about the millions of non-techies who are about to have their stuff deleted because Facebook decided, on a whim, to railroad them into the Moments app? Everyone on HN knows not to trust Facebook with anything of of value, but as technical people our collective response to a corporation deleting the stuff of people who don't should not be "I'm okay, I have backups".
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    >What about the millions of non-techies who are about to have their stuff deleted because Facebook decided, on a whim, to railroad them into the Moments app? They'll have a great opportunity to learn via experience what we've known for years. This is the only way they learn.
    - officemonkey 10y ago
      And they will learn an important lesson about using a free service. If you want functionality, pay money.
jdeibele 10y ago
I installed Messenger but didn't use it much. When Facebook shut off access to chat via the web app a few days ago I removed Messenger. There's no way I'm going to install this app. I never installed the Facebook app because of repeated articles about what a battery killer it was. I installed Google Photos on my iPhone because it provided me with some features I couldn't get otherwise.
msie 10y ago
Yeah right. Nothing at Facebook gets deleted.
- awqrre 10y ago
  They will hide it from everyone but themselves, and the NSA...
vonklaus 10y ago
I read the article before I reacted but this is a bad move for a lot of reasons: * user hostility & just doing this with messenger app. * messenger app exists as does instagram and whatsapp. You want your own ecosystem, build a phone or an OS * overplaying their hand. facebook is successful because it is a defacto standard. However, fragmenting new users by expecting them to have 4 apps (whatsapp, instagram, messenger & moments) as well as a website is a lot to ask. especially on a phone thats core function is messeging and photography, they are either launching an OS or they are insane. Now, I use facebook occasionally out of convenience but I am not a huge fan of it. I recognize I am a fringe & atypical user concerned with privacy & tech consolidation, but threatening teenagers wasn't a great strategy when I was one not that long ago, so the alternative to "if you live under my house, you fol my rules", is to crash with your mates apple, microsoft, google, twitter, snapchat and whatever else exists
- jrnichols 10y ago
  > You want your own ecosystem, build a phone or an OS they tried that and it was a dismal failure.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    thats my point. executing a hostile takeover of soneones phone could end poorly. im sure they calculated this, but i think they could have over estimated their leverage
DiabloD3 10y ago
Okay, so, the obvious question seems to be: if I am an affected user (I'm not, I don't do that Facebook thing personally), then wouldn't uninstalling the app prevent the deletion of photos? The article is thin on details, does this mean it deletes photos out of your Google Photos and Apple Camera Roll apps? It seems to be written a bit FUDdy, but it is Facebook afterall, they're known to violate the social contract they have with users frequently.
- delecti 10y ago
  They will delete photos synced to their servers, and only the copies on their servers. And only photos that were synced automatically and not posted. Most users have no reason whatsoever to worry.
  - DiabloD3 10y ago
    Oh, that is a much smaller thing to worry about. Still a pointless dick move, but the article didn't actually spell that out.
HannibalLecter 10y ago
Fecalbook
iamleppert 10y ago
bye felecia. seriously, why do you guys still use facebook like a sheep or piece of ass that is abused and pushed around by an over-zealous pimp?
free2rhyme214 10y ago
Monopoly behavior.
microcolonel 10y ago
Reminds me of recent Apple shenanigans with iTunes.
macawfish 10y ago
I quit Facebook and never looked back once.
cs702 10y ago
This looks like the opposite of "make something people want."
quickben 10y ago
Why is Facebook so bullish lately?
partiallypro 10y ago
And what about platforms they don't actively support a "photo app" on, like Windows 10/10M?
Havoc 10y ago
They really need a "don't be evil" slogan or something...
kwamenum86 10y ago
-
- cjahsh 10y ago
  Can provide any details? Is it right in principle, is the evidence wrong, or is the evidence wrong but conclusion right (or vice versa)
jpgvm 10y ago
Even if this wasn't bullshit it would be an empty threat. Facebook/Google never delete anything. Ever.
overcast 10y ago
Every time I read the latest news at Facebook, the more I'm glad I "deleted" my account there last year.
occamrazor 10y ago
I still can't figure out why they create more and more apps. What's wrong with a single FB app that supports messaging and photos?

105 points by guiseroom 10y ago

I'm pretty happy with my decision to keep Facebook apps off my phone. I'll check the mobile site once in a while to see the news feed, but that's it. Of course I have google backing everything up, so maybe that's not much better. Time to write a little script to routinely backup photos from there to my own hard drive.

witty_username 10y ago
Google Takeout might help: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
swiley 10y ago
Synching is great for backing things like photos up. Although that sounds like a one way thing that you could do with rsync.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
I personally just clean out my phone onto my computer once every few months and keep it there if I feel the urge to look at it. Once in a while I'll zip up anything I think I haven't backuped up (with generous overlap) and send it over to AWS Glacier. I've got 123 GB of data there and it cost me $0.84 a month. It'll be a bit of a pain to recover if I ever loose my local copies but I don't expect that to happen frequently.

jaitsu 10y ago

They seem to go about these things in the wrong way. Take Messenger for example, there was no good reason to remove access to this via a browser on mobile devices. I don't want to have to install an app for something that was previously available in a browser. If you can't provide me with all of the features of messenger in the browser then that's fine. I thought we were meant to be progressing towards a truly open web accessible to all, regardless of device. This is just another example of Facebook doing whatever they please just because they can. I wonder how long that will last until people start moving away from the platform.

vwcx 10y ago
I've never installed Facebook Messenger and only access facebook through a mobile browser. What functionality am I missing out on?
- Spooky23 10y ago
  A recent TechCrunch article reported that the functionality that you use is going away. It's a hamfisted move. They abuse these apps to do something -- my wife tried the messenger app and discovered a noticeable loss of battery life. I think she uninstalled it within 24 hours.
  - notifier2050 10y ago
    I uninstalled both Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps from my Nexus 9 and it's become much faster. Can say that I am surprised.
  - parthdesai 10y ago
    For me personally, it has gone away. I used to own Moto g ( 1 gb ram version) so there was no way i could afford to have messenger and facebook app installed on my phone. I budged and installed messenger when i bought nexus 6P though.
    - zem 10y ago
      mbasic.facebook.com still has access to messages, if you want to uninstall messenger
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        Thank you for that. I had told everyone to message me on WhatsApp, and resigned to just be ignoring their messages until I was at a computer again. This will help.
  - petecox 10y ago
    I tried the Facebook apps and they were slow, buggy and intrusive. Messaging from the mobile web page was fine... Message to monetizing corporations - Sorry, all I want is a 4.5" web page downscaled from 21". It's all just CSS, right? And this is why I signed up to the dream and bought a Mozilla device with Firefox OS; alas the hardware died around the time the OS was orphaned. I use a handful of apps on my phone regularly and they're mainly for metropolitan services and web pages that refuse to reskin their sites for small screens. Nothing that couldn't be accomplished in HTML5 and with decent coding would probably run better than the current impls.

swiley 10y ago

Go ahead! I don't keep anything on Facebook that I don't have locally.

lewiscollard 10y ago
That's nice. What about the millions of non-techies who are about to have their stuff deleted because Facebook decided, on a whim, to railroad them into the Moments app? Everyone on HN knows not to trust Facebook with anything of of value, but as technical people our collective response to a corporation deleting the stuff of people who don't should not be "I'm okay, I have backups".
- mixedCase 10y ago
  >What about the millions of non-techies who are about to have their stuff deleted because Facebook decided, on a whim, to railroad them into the Moments app? They'll have a great opportunity to learn via experience what we've known for years. This is the only way they learn.
  - officemonkey 10y ago
    And they will learn an important lesson about using a free service. If you want functionality, pay money.

jdeibele 10y ago

I installed Messenger but didn't use it much. When Facebook shut off access to chat via the web app a few days ago I removed Messenger. There's no way I'm going to install this app. I never installed the Facebook app because of repeated articles about what a battery killer it was. I installed Google Photos on my iPhone because it provided me with some features I couldn't get otherwise.

msie 10y ago

Yeah right. Nothing at Facebook gets deleted.

awqrre 10y ago
They will hide it from everyone but themselves, and the NSA...

vonklaus 10y ago

I read the article before I reacted but this is a bad move for a lot of reasons: * user hostility & just doing this with messenger app. * messenger app exists as does instagram and whatsapp. You want your own ecosystem, build a phone or an OS * overplaying their hand. facebook is successful because it is a defacto standard. However, fragmenting new users by expecting them to have 4 apps (whatsapp, instagram, messenger & moments) as well as a website is a lot to ask. especially on a phone thats core function is messeging and photography, they are either launching an OS or they are insane. Now, I use facebook occasionally out of convenience but I am not a huge fan of it. I recognize I am a fringe & atypical user concerned with privacy & tech consolidation, but threatening teenagers wasn't a great strategy when I was one not that long ago, so the alternative to "if you live under my house, you fol my rules", is to crash with your mates apple, microsoft, google, twitter, snapchat and whatever else exists

jrnichols 10y ago
> You want your own ecosystem, build a phone or an OS they tried that and it was a dismal failure.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  thats my point. executing a hostile takeover of soneones phone could end poorly. im sure they calculated this, but i think they could have over estimated their leverage

DiabloD3 10y ago

Okay, so, the obvious question seems to be: if I am an affected user (I'm not, I don't do that Facebook thing personally), then wouldn't uninstalling the app prevent the deletion of photos? The article is thin on details, does this mean it deletes photos out of your Google Photos and Apple Camera Roll apps? It seems to be written a bit FUDdy, but it is Facebook afterall, they're known to violate the social contract they have with users frequently.

delecti 10y ago
They will delete photos synced to their servers, and only the copies on their servers. And only photos that were synced automatically and not posted. Most users have no reason whatsoever to worry.
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  Oh, that is a much smaller thing to worry about. Still a pointless dick move, but the article didn't actually spell that out.

HannibalLecter 10y ago

Fecalbook

iamleppert 10y ago

bye felecia. seriously, why do you guys still use facebook like a sheep or piece of ass that is abused and pushed around by an over-zealous pimp?

free2rhyme214 10y ago

Monopoly behavior.

microcolonel 10y ago

Reminds me of recent Apple shenanigans with iTunes.

macawfish 10y ago

I quit Facebook and never looked back once.

cs702 10y ago

This looks like the opposite of "make something people want."

quickben 10y ago

Why is Facebook so bullish lately?

partiallypro 10y ago

And what about platforms they don't actively support a "photo app" on, like Windows 10/10M?

Havoc 10y ago

They really need a "don't be evil" slogan or something...

kwamenum86 10y ago

cjahsh 10y ago
Can provide any details? Is it right in principle, is the evidence wrong, or is the evidence wrong but conclusion right (or vice versa)

jpgvm 10y ago

Even if this wasn't bullshit it would be an empty threat. Facebook/Google never delete anything. Ever.

overcast 10y ago

Every time I read the latest news at Facebook, the more I'm glad I "deleted" my account there last year.

occamrazor 10y ago

I still can't figure out why they create more and more apps. What's wrong with a single FB app that supports messaging and photos?