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Facebook Threatens To Delete Users' Photos If They Don't Install Moments app (betanews.com) 189

Mark Wilson, reporting for BetaNews: Not content with forcing people into using its Messenger app, Facebook is continuing its aggressive tactics and driving users to install its photo-sharing app, Moments. The social network has warned users that their photos face deletion if they fail to use the Moments app. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a huge surge in interest in the app, pushing it to the top of the download charts. Facebook says it is going to delete Synced Albums and Synced Photos if Moments is not installed by July 7, sending warning emails to a number of users. This has understandably led to panic installations of Moments as people sought to protect the photos that have been automatically synchronized from their phone. It's important to note that it is only these synced photos that are at risk, but it's clear that there is an element of confusion about what Facebook is planning to delete.
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Facebook Threatens To Delete Users' Photos If They Don't Install Moments app

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:35PM (#52296845)

    "only these synced photos that are at risk, but it's clear that there is an element of confusion about what Facebook is planning to delete."

    No, it's clear that you should not use Facebook for informaiton you care about, or at all if you care about your privacy.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @06:21PM (#52297059)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • My bother's two daughters, both college educated, are like that. They never back up the photos from their phones. They just depend on Facebook. The photos look okay on a phone, not so much on a 24" monitor. And forget about printing them.

        I don't know what they're using, but when my iToys back up to iTunes (which everyone seems to hate but works OK for me) the pics are backed up as well, in full rez). This is default behavior. And this is backup to local disc, not iCloud (or any other cloud)

        Are they not backing up their phones at all? If so... then this may be a learning experience.

        • I don't know what they're using, but when my iToys back up to iTunes (which everyone seems to hate but works OK for me) the pics are backed up as well, in full rez). This is default behavior. And this is backup to local disc, not iCloud (or any other cloud)

          Are they not backing up their phones at all? If so... then this may be a learning experience.

          I plug me iphone income Mac, and yup- it gets loaded tight on onto the mac. Then I have two backups from there. I also just plug in the SD card from my Nikon, and it gets backed up automatically. FUll rez, and easily retrievable. I can't for the life of me understand how anything could be easier.

          Now I want to be kind, but the tools that use Facebook are teh same sort of tools that used to use America On Line. Backups? That's sumpin you do in a car.

          • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

            Dead on. Facebook is like AOL in the modern age. The lamest of the lame.

      • And forget about printing them.

        How quaint! So 20th Century. Imagine, they used to always do photos on paper, or all things....

        • How quaint! So 20th Century. Imagine, they used to always do photos on paper, or all things....

          They'll never see an image slowly appear before your eyes submerged in a tray of developer in a room lit only by an orange lamp..

          I miss it, and I don't miss it. My romantic side, the side that likes Rachmaninoff and Beethoven misses it.

          My nose doesn't miss it.

        • And forget about printing them.

          How quaint! So 20th Century. Imagine, they used to always do photos on paper, or all things....

          And those photos might be around long after the cloud backup - if any - goes belly up.

    • by mlts ( 1038732 )

      This. Use FB for photos to be published, not for anything else. For everything else, there are many other ways to do it. I personally just use an app that dumps all the photos of my device to a NAS when I'm within Wi-Fi range (the NAS is firewalled away from the world), then the NAS does an encrypted backup offsite.

      The last place I'd ever want to use for a photo storage place is FB, even if it is "free".

      • by hazem ( 472289 )

        I personally just use an app that dumps all the photos of my device to a NAS when I'm within Wi-Fi range

        Which app do you use for this?

        • by mrzaph0d ( 25646 )
          Sweet Home [google.com] is what I use. Works great, backs up from my kids, the wife, and mine.
        • by mlts ( 1038732 )

          Synology has an app that I use. It can go over the Internet, but I use it to directly connect via IP and dump the files when on the home Wi-Fi segment. The NAS isn't perfect (SynoLocker comes to mind as what can go wrong), but I'd rather store my data under my physical control, and if I do store anything offsite, it gets stashed encrypted, preferably with a keyfile, so an attacker has to brute force the entire keyspace.

  • keep what's yours (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lead Butthead ( 321013 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:35PM (#52296849) Journal

    the reason why you should never trust data you want to keep with a third party.

    • Re:keep what's yours (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:39PM (#52296859) Homepage Journal

      This. If it isn't under your direct control, it isn't really yours.

      • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @07:04PM (#52297219)

        Entire generations are forgetting that. It's not just the Millenials -- I'm an "X" and I find most of my friends have shunned physical media wholeheartedly. I look at them like they're crazy.

        Streaming and cloud offer no permanence unless one can store local copies of equal quality.

        I was shocked about 3 years ago when I wanted to add four more "Benno" DVD shelf towers from Ikea to my existing 10. Benno is the foundation of my home cinema storage. I couldn't find them in the store, it said "order only." So I ordered, and paid a fortune in freight because there's no store pickup for special orders.

        SO I got them, put them up, and now, should I want more, i'm screwed unless I buy used. But fortunately, i follow my own storage advice -- whatever you think is adequate, double it.

        The point of the anecdote? Physical is dead, no matter how much we try to cling to it. And entire generations are being suckered into believing this and trusting it! Ugh!

        But of course, this is what the industry wants! Want that movie? Pay for it for every view! Want that song / record? Pay for it for every listen! Or at least a subscription!

        I'm starting to feel physical media was our way of holding "their" content ransom.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          I don't think they're forgetting - they've never really known any different. Most kids these days never experienced the joy of spending a day reloading data from a pile of floppy diskettes.

          • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

            I also remember losing all my data to floppy disks and/or Virii that infected them.

            We keep multiple copies of our photo album on personal devices. Nothing is in the cloud unless I control the hardware.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          The point of the anecdote? Physical is dead, no matter how much we try to cling to it. And entire generations are being suckered into believing this and trusting it! Ugh!

          They're suckered into it by the whole "convenience" aspect. Physical means having to find it, then stick it in the slot. "Digital" means just picking it off a list and watching it instantly.

          Applies to anything - books, music, movies, etc. The physical version is always less convenient, requiring searching and finding and physical manipulati

        • Re:keep what's yours (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Sunday June 12, 2016 @05:38AM (#52298705)

          Streaming and cloud offer no permanence unless one can store local copies of equal quality.

          But content isn't scarce anymore, so what's the point of permanence?

          Want that movie? Pay for it for every view! Want that song / record? Pay for it for every listen!

          How many movies are worth watching more than - or even - once? Go to a theater if you want to see big-budget special effects. For everything else, there's Youtube and endless amounts of user-generated content. And the same goes for music.

          Not worrying about permanence or control is perfectly rational when the Internet makes content like the air we breath: always there, just inhale when you need it and don't worry about it otherwise. Yes, some gulps of air smell sweeter than others, but there will be others just as sweet, so why try to cling to them? It's us old farts who carefully store pressurized containers because we're haunted by our memories of pre-photosynthesis days who are the irrational ones :).

          • by Toshito ( 452851 )

            But content isn't scarce anymore, so what's the point of permanence?

            The point of permanence and ownership is that my kids and grandkids will be able to read any books I bought or listen to my vinyl and cd records collection for the next 50 years.

            Even if some government decides that it's now banned, or it gets edited to remove non-PC parts, or ads and product placement get inserted into the streaming version, or the author decides that he doesn't want to distribute his work anymore, my version will always be the one I bought.

            And the other point is that I can also re-sell wha

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Threni ( 635302 )

      Well, when you're using a free service, anyway.

      If I was in a restaurant, or getting someone to fix my car or paint my house and i wasn't giving them any money I'd set my expectations accordingly.

      If you want to keep your pictures safe, just don't upload them to facebook and hope they'll keep them safe foryou forever; spend a few pennies on a usb key and keep them safe yourself forever, and/or store them on google photos.

      This really isn't something which should a surprise a developmentally normal adult.

      • Only the service isn't free. It costs no money, but costs privacy and personal data, which you might attribute a value of zero, but others don't.

    • I can't worry about that silly shit. Facebook is the best free advertising platform anybody could ask for. Take advantage of it and make a buck or two.

      • Sorry, can't do. I shave with a straight razor and I know what I'd do if I had a sharp knife at the throat of someone like that.

      • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        Free? I call TANSTAAFL on that.

        You are the product at Facebook, nothing else. The ability to share your info there is just a lure.

        • I'm a product they want to keep happy, for continuing use as a product. I just post to Facebook with the assumption that the entire world has access to what I put there, because that seems to be a reasonably safe assumption. There are things you will not learn about me from Facebook (or anywhere on the Internet, for that matter).

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I know that americans firmly believe that it's the god-given right of companies to screw them any way they like, but it doesn't work that way in the rest of the world, particularly not in the EU.

      Here companies have a legal duty of care to the public which is codified in a large number of consumer and data protection laws, and those laws have teeth.

      A company has the right to implement anything they want on their own machinery, but that right doesn't extend to the machinery of others. They don't own their us

    • Sadly, with the every expanding rental economy, there will come a day when your data is held hostage by the software and cloud companies. Never mind ransomware from some former Soviet bloc country. This extortion will be entirely legal.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Is that a promise? Hope so.

  • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:41PM (#52296865)

    The only winning move is not to play.

    • I'm not sure why you were modded funny. This is actually very insightful - as well as a perfectly apropos use of this line from the movie.

  • That's OK (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:41PM (#52296867) Journal
    Delete them. I won't upload photos to Facebook anymore. End of issue.
    • That's what one (at the time) well known image storing website did. Imageshack it was.
      First they said "no more uploading anonymously" so I created an account.
      Then they said "no more uploading your images for free, you need to buy one subscription model" so I stopped uploading images there.
      Finally they said "if you don't pay, we'll delete your photos" so I made a ticket saying "fuck you, delete my account" which they did.

      Go ello (https://ello.co/) and never look back, fuck Facebook.

    • I agree. I've already decided to not install the messenger app no matter what, told people I chat with. What sucks is when you try to use regular chat NOW, it will bump you to down toad the app a couple of times, won't let you into the regular chat until you do a couple of gyrations No thanks, just like I said no thanks to Windows 10.

      • To tell the truth I don't upload photos there much anymore anyway. If it doesn't have some stupid meme written on it people on Facebook don't look at them much anyway. It's turned in to a rant machine from an empathy box. Can I get an amen and share to that?
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:42PM (#52296873)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Well, first off? I don't think there's any point in trying to twist this into some sort of "anti libertarian" rant ... implying it's libertarian philosophies which cause sites like Facebook to act the way they do.

      IMO, this has nothing to do with politics, unless you're going to go so far as to say you feel social media, cloud drive storage, cloud backup and other such offerings should all be run only by the government or strictly regulated under government control. (I suppose that's ONE way to try to force

    • Facebook is a billboard, and it's free to all. Can you think of a better setup? Only put up the data you want to share, pictures of products, prices, location, contact info, etc. Why does everybody make a big stink about nothing? This is what the *Market Will Bear*. It is what most people accept.

    • You have it wrong.

      It obviously costs money to store all those photos since they do require, you know, physical memory space and such.

      This is a natural move, install something that lets us market to you and gather more data on you or stop using our free service.

      I'll delete my account if they delete my photo's. Stop trying to squeeze a dime out of me, I have no real need for your service.
    • It's not so cut and dry. When friends and family use the site to organize events, and post photos of you, saying "I just won't use it" isn't practical. If "no one makes you use it" was a sufficient argument or approach to corporate misbehavior we would live in a much nicer world. The reality is when corporations abuse their power - we move to regulate them or as we are able boycott them. (And if a boycott is not realistic, then at the moment turning to public outrage or legal recourse through the courts or
    • are left to wonder, is this cycle of trust, greed, and betrayal an inextricable part of the experience?

      Those of us who do use it can't figure out what the fuss is all about.

      shouldnt we, the product of sites like facebook, have more say in how the site is managed or what happens to our data?

      Why? Facebook is nothing more than a publication service. It displays content I put on there. I really couldn't care less if they change their requirements. It's not like I use it as my only copy of critical data, and those people who do get zero sympathy from me.

      Note the story here is that this only affects synced photos. Facebook releases a separate app for it, so it makes sense to only support the separate app going forward. Kind of li

    • by swb ( 14022 )

      Something seems to have gone off the rails.

      Innovation in terms of intrinsic product improvement or creation seems to be be supplanted by innovation as business engineering. This type of innovation produces product changes which increase lock-in, adds tracking, coerces users into other platforms, furthers planed obsolescence, basically anything that changes the products to improve profit margins first, with improvements to users a distant second if at all.

      I suspect that big companies like Facebook or Apple

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by mattwarden ( 699984 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:43PM (#52296881)

    Perhaps with enough threats like this my "deactivated" account will one day actually be deleted like I would prefer

  • Is that a smartphone-only thing? Will computer users have their photos deleted?

    Can anyone think of a synonym for "network" that begins with the letter "S"?

    Anti-Social S????? (ASS.com)

  • You can bet that if FB is forcing this issue then they have some kind of spyware in it. Facial recognition, anyone? Glad I'm not on FB. I encourage all my friends to vacate NSA's premise, err...I mean FB.
  • By Delete them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:48PM (#52296915)

    they mean, remove them from your ability to access them.

      I'm guessing they're probably planning on holding onto them, and using them for pattern training, facial recognition and future blackmail..

  • by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:52PM (#52296939)

    For facebook, you are the product, not the customer. I don't get it why people think otherwise and then first use it and after that get upset if they get treated like a product.

    Don't make a facebook account, that's it.

    • > I don't get it why people think otherwise and then first use it and after that get upset if they get treated like a product.

      Because, sadly, you can't stop idiots from using fazebook. They don't understand that someone else is profiting off the data they voluntarily gave.

    • With Facebook, Yoooo toooo can make millions selling distressed properties! Sign up now!

      People shouldn't take this internet stuff personally. Just treat it like a business. And do like the rich and famous, use a personal server for email and other *cough* personal information that might be used against you.

    • Ironically enough the people most upset about this are the people who don't use Facebook.

      As for your product not consumer meme, please go and take a course in basic business if you believe you're only one or the other.

  • by zuki ( 845560 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:57PM (#52296971) Journal
    This is only the beginning of the systematic rape of users and their data. Once tech companies have passed certain milestones in terms of size and user base, this power they hold over the plumbing infallibly goes to their collective heads.

    Just as Microsoft with the Windows 10 upgrades. It's merely a confirmation that we must find ways around entrusting our digital assets to such 'for-profit' outfits. They're obviously banking their entire business model on the fact that they will be able to monetize the user data for far more than what it's costing them, offering "free" as a way to entice them in.

    While it's not sexy, there needs to be the open-source equivalent, sort of what Android is to Windows but for social networks. Something that is community-supported, and allows people more freedom, even if the price is less curation and more chaos. Sort of like... The Internet?
    • usenet used to be free and not owned by any one corp. most was not censor-able and no one could 'take their ball and go home' like they can with websites.

      you could fetch news and there was no COOKIE to let on that you were fetching news. think about that for a minute. seriously, think about what we lost when we added our own trackability to things.

      usenet was wonderful, for the most part. there was spam and commercial activity but a lot of it was self policed and done well enough so that we could use the

  • I actually am glad - my wife posted family photos a while back (years ago, we don't make that mistake anymore), and maybe now that FB is threatening this, we'll get those old ones removed (at least from public access), too.

    Mark, keep this up! I simply can't wait until FB starts deleting other sections of your account for not installing other apps. First FB Messenger, now FB Moments, what's next? FB Graph?

  • Aside from the obvious "all your base are belong to us" great way to alienate users that don't use a mobile platform.

    Or those that don't trust os level permissions allowed on just about any of them.

  • I don't have facebook. And this is why. I don't make broken shit, I don't buy broken shit. Professional ethics.
  • "Not content with forcing people into using its Messenger app, Facebook is continuing its aggressive tactics and driving users to install its photo-sharing app, Moments"

    Not content? Aggressive tactics? Driving users? Perhaps it's time for an entitlement-check - when someone gives you free software and access to their social network perhaps a better attitude might be:

    Soon after giving people its second free app, the free online social network is now giving a second app and removing duplicate functionalit

  • Nobody cares what your cat looks like or what you ate for breakfast. Facebook is saving you the trouble of deleting them.
  • Deleted? I have a hard time believing they delete any private information about users, including pictures. More like, they'll take your pictures offline so they still have your data, but you can't access it anymore.
  • Always wondered how I could make sure that my photos really did get removed after ditching the platform. Now they are doing it for me. :)
  • Only ignorant people keep on using Facebook these days.
  • "This has understandably led to panic installations of Moments " Like their photos are worth twiddly shit.
  • by mTor ( 18585 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @08:01PM (#52297403)

    That's all it really is. You're basically entrusting your data with companies that have to somehow make money off you or off your data.

    So don't be surprised when they pull crap like this on you.

  • by bug_hunter ( 32923 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @08:31PM (#52297479)
    So can someone explain if the following is true as it's my understanding:

    * Facebook can be configured to automatically sync photos from your mobile device.
    * That makes it super quick to share a photo. (and probably gives Facebook access to all your photos without user intervention)
    * Now Facebook will discard the server side copy of photos that you never shared or put into an album unless you install moments?

    Sorry if I've got my facts wrong, though it's so hard to work out the actual facts when 99% of discussion is Facebook bashing rather than fact discussing.
    (No fan of Facebook policies here myself, just annoyed at how hard it is to work out what's going on outside of "Facebook = evil")
    • by Christopher Fritz ( 1550669 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @10:16PM (#52297871)

      As I understand it, the Facebook app had a feature to synchronize photos you've taken to Facebook. This feature has been removed from the Facebook app, and put into a separate app (which probably has extra features related specifically to managing synced photos, I'm guessing). If you used the synchronization feature in the Facebook app, you need to install the Moments app to continue to use that feature. Anything synced from the Facebook app will be deleted, unless "transferred" to synchronizing from the Moments app. A feature from one app is being branched off to another app. If you want to use that feature, there's a more specific place for it now.

      I've never used any of these apps, so I don't know how accurate this is. It's just what I gather from reading some articles on this.

      • Thanks for the info.
        I know Facebook isn't the most altruistic business by any stretch, but I never understood the massive hate for breaking messages out into a message app, and similarly for this.
        A separate app for messages makes a lot of sense, especially when it comes to notification settings, updates and local storage. All these apps are dollar amount free, and I feel their separation is for a cleaner technical experience rather than anything nefarious.
        I completely respect people who don't want to use
        • by iris-n ( 1276146 )

          I'm one of the haters. I don't use Facebook's app because I don't want to give them total control of my phone, I just use the mobile version of the website. And now messages don't work anymore unless I install their crappy app! Well, I won't. I'll just use WhatsApp instead and be free of these assholes. Oh wait.

        • by Raenex ( 947668 )

          I completely respect people who don't want to use Facebook for privacy or other reasons, but I don't feel this is a smoking gun of them hating their users or even mistreating them.

          It's one thing to separate out an app, it's another to bully users into downloading the app by telling them you're going to delete their photos if you don't move to it. Is this the kind of move you'd make if it was your decision?

          • Yeah, to be fair to your point, I don't think Facebook is really hurting when it comes to disk space.
            The delete does sound more like a strong-arm tactic than a - we need to do this to keep things manageable - tactic.
  • I've read and done term searching on FaceBook's ToS. Nothing in their ToS states that you have given them the right to DESTROY your copyrighted material.

    Sue their ass under the DMCA for violating and destroying your copyright. They voted for this law, time to put it to use against them.

  • by ubergeek65536 ( 862868 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @09:45PM (#52297747)

    I wouldn't care if Facebook deleted everything but how many people don't use Facebook via a phone? I refuse to use apps that have access to my contact lists, sms messages, and call history.

    • by Alumoi ( 1321661 )

      Really? And how do you dial? Whistle in the microphone? The phone dialer is an app, you know. And, lo and behold, it has access to your contacts, sms, call history.

      • I should have been more specific. I don't install apps that require network access which have access to contacts and SMS unless I see the source.
        You can install your own trusted dialer app or better yet, build and install the OS. I have all network access firewalled by default just in case I miss something.

  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Saturday June 11, 2016 @11:28PM (#52298115) Journal

    Serves people right for using Facebook.

    Grovel, you worthless worms, and swear fealty to the Almighty Zuckerberg!

  • by Howitzer86 ( 964585 ) on Sunday June 12, 2016 @01:55AM (#52298385)

    Sometimes I avoid doing things without a clear logical reason... like photo synching with cloud stuff. Every cloud company is trying to get at my photos, but not everything is something I want on a server somewhere... so I never did it and found the push to do it by various apps to be annoying. I pay for Dropbox, so I'm not being a Luddite. I was just unwilling to upload my pictures automatically to everything everywhere.

    Good to see that my not-completely-rational avoidance of these things can have a rational basis. Between this and Apple's cloud music problem, I'm in no rush to give up control of my content to a third party.

    On that note, imagine for a moment if Facebook were to replace all of your photos with generic whitewashed sitcom versions of the same thing, starring actors with perfect teeth and hair. Wouldn't that be creepy? That's basically what Apple did to people's cloud synched music. Unique, hard to find versions of specific songs... potentially lost forever, replaced with whatever official version Apple has.

    Honestly the whole thing is creepy when you get down to it. Even Microsoft's effort to force installs of Windows 10. What's going on in Silicon Valley (or Redmond/or this generation of the tech sector in general)?!

  • How many Facebook apps do we need? Isn't one buggy, battery draining, privacy invading app enough? If I want Facebook I just use my phone's browser now. They've tried to make it harder for you if you want to use private browsing sessions, but then that justs add to my feeling of enough is enough!

  • Facebook looks as if it is rapidly becoming a walled community, a platform separate from the rest of the Internet.
  • Oh, and who reported it? is there real evidence? Because if this is real, why didn't a lot of users get the same 'threath'..
    Reading the original article I don't even see a decent Source, I even see it has a badly written email which I think is even more a fishing mail than a real mail from facebook..
    To me, this just looks more like the original article write wanted some extra traffic to his site without really investigating the actual claim if it's true..

  • What about users, which only use the website?

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