What you need to know
- Facebook's data transfer tool now lets you export your photos to Dropbox and Koofr.
- The service initially worked with Google Photos.
- The company says it plans to expand support of tool to more services in the future, possibly Microsoft's OneDrive and Apple's iCloud.
Facebook now supports direct transfer of photos and images stored on its platform to Dropbox and Koofr (a European cloud storage service). This is done through the same data portability tool that the company introduced with Google Photos support late last year.
Facebook's data transfer tool is built on a philosophy that emphasises the portability of data. Your data is yours, not bound to whichever service you initially create it on. Many companies already let you export your data in one format or another, Facebook is just one of the biggest platforms that allows for direct transfer to a rival's service.
We want to continue to build data portability features people can trust. To do that, the internet needs clearer rules about what kinds of data should be portable and who is responsible for protecting that data as it moves to different services. Policymakers have a vital role to play in this. We hope this tool can advance conversations with experts, developers and policymakers on the privacy questions we identified in our data portability white paper and recent submission to the Federal Trade Commission. 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 push data portability innovation forward.
Facebook plans to expand support to more companies. Hopefully products like Apple's iCloud and Microsoft's OneDrive are quickly supported.
How to move your Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos
