Social networking company Facebook has launched a tool that will allow its users to transfer photos and videos from the platform to Google Photos.
Facebook said the service, which will enable its users to transfer photos from its platform to Google Photos, will be initially implemented in Ireland before being launched globally in 2020. The company also claimed that it planned to introduce other services in the future as part of its "data portability" initiative.
The move was commended by the Open Rights Group (ORG) campaign but it emphasized on the need to expand this beyond the two technology giants. ORG director Jim Killock said: "It's important that Facebook and other companies allow you to move data about. "It's critical that this kind of portability is not just for a handful of global giants, if it is going to encourage competition."
"There will also be potential privacy issues with data portability as users will potentially take risks when they move data to third parties, so companies and regulators will need to develop ways that deal with rogue actors," Killock added.
In a blog post introducing the Google Photo tool, Facebook said it had considered security risks while developing it for a year. The company said: "Any mechanism to send data outside of a service carries risk. We have put measures in place to mitigate these risks."
Facebook will implement extra authentication steps to make sure that only the owner of the account can transfer a file. The Google Photos tool is part of Facebook's Data Transfer Project, which aims to create an open-source platform for anyone to use to move their data between online services.
The project also include other technology companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Twitter."
Since 2010, Facebook has enabled its users to download their data. In 2018, journalist Radhika Sanghani tested this feature and found that the 324MB data file of her 12 years on Facebook had taken 40 minutes to download.
