Facebook Threatens To Delete Your Synced Photos Unless You Download This App

Facebook has began rolling out notifications warning users that they could potentially lose their synced photos forever. The move is an attempt to push their latest app called “Moments” onto users phones and further expand the Facebook ecosystem. Those of you who are heavy-duty photo uploaders, don’t need to fret just yet as the photos that are imminently in danger are the ones that have been synced through your phone.

Just to clarify, the only photos that are in danger of being deleted are ones that have been automatically uploaded to Facebook, not the ones you’ve manually put there. The wording in the emails and in-app notification could lead to a bit of confusion, and lead to tons of unwarranted downloads of the Moments app. Facebook pulled a similar move two years ago when it forced users to download the standalone messenger app to continue to be able to take advantage of the chat feature. I’m curious about the true motive behind this move, as Facebook already owns the largest photo sharing app available, in Instagram. It seems they would work more to integrate the photos there instead of an entirely separate app.

For now, Facebook is offering users the ability to download those particular photos into a .zip file and they’ll offer this service through July 7th.