Facebook will now let users export photos and videos from their accounts to Dropbox and EU startup Koofr. In June, the company had enabled people to download their photos and videos from Facebook using Google Photos, and it was now extending the data portability feature tool to two more services. The tool will make downloading and transferring data to other apps much easier for people who have used the social networking platform for a long time. Facebook said that it planned to further expand the list of compatible services.
Facebook’s Director of Privacy and Public Policy, Steve Satterfield, said in a blog post that the company had designed this tool to optimise for privacy, security, and utility. The photo and video transfer tool is based on code that was developed through the open-sourced Data Transfer Project (DTP). Along with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter had joined the DTP initiative in July in order to help users manage and transfer data without privacy issues.
The expansion of Facebook’s photo transfer tool comes ahead of a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hearing scheduled for September 22 that will examine the potential challenges and benefits of data portability.
“We’ve long believed that if you share data with one service, you should be able to move it safely and securely to another. That’s the principle of data portability, which gives people control and choice while also encouraging innovation,” wrote Satterfield in the blog post.
The tech giant said that it wants to continue to build data portability features that people can trust. In order to do so, the Internet needs clearer rules about the kind of data that should be portable and who is responsible for protecting the data when it moves to different services, according to Facebook.
Data portability is required by the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) and European Union’s General Data Regulation Protection (GDPR) privacy rules. Facebook has been pushing for legislation in the US that will make it easier for users to transfer photos and videos to other tech platforms.
It is to be noted that this feature is different from Facebook’s existing feature that lets users download all of their Facebook data; this one is limited to photos and videos.
How to transfer your Facebook Photos and Videos
The data portability tool can be accessed by clicking on Your Facebook Information from settings. Select Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos – you’ll then be asked to enter your Facebook password before starting the transfer, in order to verify your identity. Choose between Dropbox, Google Photos, or Koofr, from the list of available destinations. Click on Confirm Transfer. You will receive a notification via email and on Facebook once the transfer is complete.
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