(Let me preface this by owning that I am considerably techno challenged. I don’t code, or game, just stumble about the web mostly. )
I’m reading in the news about how FB are going to force people to move to their photo app (much like they successfully did with messenger). I understand this part. And if your photos were synced, not manually loaded, they will disappear if you don’t get the app. (Hope I got this part right?)
I don’t really know what syncing they mean. Do they mean when I sync my iPad to my desktop to download photos! Or are they talking about syncing a camera to (what device I’m unsure, desktop? iPad? Phone? ) Facebook and loading a whole slew of pictures at once?
And I have no real idea what they mean by ‘manually’ loading, to be honest.
Apparently they are unaware of the aging demographic using their platform, who may, like me, have no clear idea what they are on about.
Why haven’t they even bothered to tell us how to determine which photos were loaded which way? And where are the photos going to disappear from? Photo alubums on FB? From my posting history? Timeline? Other people’s timelines?
What if I took the photos with my iPad or iPod, and then uploaded them to FB? What if I airdropped from the iPod to the iPad and posted to FB from there? Are they at risk of being deleted? I have no idea!
Colour me unimpressed with FB for this, and enormously confused, too.
It’s not the aging demographic that’s confused. I’m 37 and use FB all day every day and it took me a minute to figure out as well.
Basically if you were using Facebook’s photo storage capabilities, you will need to retrieve all of your stored photos or move them to their new separate photo storage app if you don’t want to lose them. But only if you were using this feature, and only really if you do not have your own copies on your phone or somewhere else already.
If you weren’t using this feature - that would pull all your photos from your device on to Facebook to store them (not to share them, that is different) - then you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Photos that you posted to your wall, other people’s walls, your albums, etc. to share are safe. That’s a different thing.
I honestly did not know that FB even offered this photo storage service so I am considering myself safe. And besides there is nothing I have that is exclusively on Facebook anyway.
I think if you’re not aware of this Facebook photo archiving service, you’re safe. You’re not dumping any photos there.