Facebook has launched a new tool that lest users bulk-export all their photos and videos to another service or social network in just a couple of clicks, starting with Google Photos.
The tool was announced on Facebook’s About website by Director of Privacy and Public Policy Steve Satterfield, and it’s part of the social media giant’s participation in something called the Data Transfer Project.
The DTP is an “open-source, service-to-service data portability platform” that wants to make it easy to carry your personal data from one service to another.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, and Microsoft are all participants, and this tool is Facebook’s way of getting out of the gate first.
The service would initially roll out in Ireland and then, in 2020, across the world, Facebook said.
In a blog post announcing the Google Photo tool, which has taken a year to build, Facebook said it had considered security risks.
“Any mechanism to send data outside of a service carries risk,” it said. “We have put measures in place to mitigate these risks.”
These include extra authentication steps to ensure only the owner of the account can transfer a file.
Facebook has allowed members to download their data since 2010.