Social networking giant Facebook will let its users transfer all of their photos and videos on its platform directly to Google photos. This will be done via a tool that for now has been released in Ireland and will be making its way to other countries by early 2020.
The new image transfer tool will enable users to copy all of their photos and videos from Facebook to Google Photos, and eventually other social media platforms.
This major development comes as part of the open source — Data Transfer Project (DTP) that seeks to address some of the key issues involved in making data portable between online services.
The project was announced last year by Google, Facebook and Twitter, with Apple joining the club a few months ago. More companies are anticipated to join in near future.
‘Data Portability Encourages Innovation’
"We believe that if you share data with one service, you should be able to move it to another, said Steve Satterfield, Director of Privacy and public policy wrote in a blog post.
"That's the principle of data portability, which gives people control and choice while also encouraging innovation," he further wrote.
The main factor with data portability tools is that they have to be genuinely useful to the end user. It is already possible for people to download all of the data that Facebook holds on them as a single archive file.
The company has emphasized on the fact that while the new tool is built on open-source software, the data will be encrypted throughout its journey from Facebook to Google photos and to any other platform from thereon if added in future.
Satterfield added, “We know we can’t do this alone, so we encourage other companies to join the Data Transfer Project to expand options for people and continue to push data portability innovation forward.”
He stated that it was through conversations with policymakers, regulators, academics and advocates that the need for such discussions was realised.
Facebook users will be able to access the new tool in the site's settings, the same place where they can download all other information from.
"We are currently testing this tool, so we will continue refining it based on feedback from people using it as well from our conversations with stakeholders," Satterfield added.
The new data transfer tool is currently available in Ireland as part of the pilot phase, and Facebook is committed to putting it out globally in early 2020, venturebeat reported.
It is worth noting that this comes around the time when anti-trust probes are currently looking into the big tech companies' hold on users' data, and a growing number of regulations around the world are specifically addressing the need for data portability on digital platforms.
(With inputs from Facebook, Venturebeat)
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