Facebook on Monday announced that it has come up with a new feature wherein users will now have the option of moving photos and videos directly from its platform to other rival services. The new feature will start with options of sharing photos and videos from Facebook directly to Google Photos.
The option will initially be available to users in Ireland and the company has plans to roll out the services globally by the first half of 2020.
Facebook's announcement comes at a time when its control over personal data has become one of the focal areas of the ongoing antitrust investigations in the United States and Europe.
Understandably, the social media giant's introduction of the new feature is in a reaction to the criticisms of the regulators.
Facebook tries to keep its promise
In September, Facebook had said that it believes in and supports data portability and is making efforts to develop new tools around it.
The new tool is a part of the Data Transfer Project where Apple, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Facebook are participants. Although the service will be initially available with Google Photos, the company has plans of including other services also in the future.
The data transfer will be encrypted and users who want to move photos and videos will be prompted for a password before the make a transfer.
The new offering by the social media platform will particularly beneficial for users of Google Photos given that Google doesn't support automatic backup of photos and videos from their phones.
Facebook continues to fight back
Facebook got embroiled in a data misuse scandal involving Cambridge Analytica in early 2018 that affected the personal data of more than 80 million users. The come has seen then been facing backlash of the regulators with antitrust investigation being carried out over the company's handling of user data.
In October, three U.S. Senators, Josh Hawley, Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal introduced a bill that would require social media platforms with more than a 100 million active monthly users to allow them easy portability of data to other rival platforms.
Facebook has long benefited from user data. Regulators say that Facebook holds so much user data which it uses to boost it digital business that it creates an imbalance which becomes difficult for rivals to match.
Understandably, the new tool is Facebook's reaction to this criticism.
