Facebook is removing location-based Nearby Friends and Location History features

Facebook is abandoning two technologies that were once heavily promoted, Nearby Friends and Location History.

Although the reasons for this decision are not very clear, we can anticipate that the decision is made for legal reasons, the location functions being extremely controversial for the way it helps Facebook to track every move of its users. The fact that Meta chooses to share this data with users, implementing “useful” functions that no one has requested, is not enough to avoid legal consequences in regions of the world that do not tolerate so easily the systematic tracking of users of some services. online controlled by foreign nations.

Probably to avoid stinging fines and new media scandals that erode the brand image and so wrinkled, Facebook announces that it will give up most of the location-based functions, the measure being applied from the end of this month. Already, the vast majority of users have already received notification messages that they are about to lose “essential” weather information, friends who happen to be in the same city / neighborhood, and other benefits they may not have known about. Moreover, the data collected over several years will be automatically deleted on August 1, 2022, if not downloaded manually, to be kept for posterity.

“Nearby Friends and Weather alerts will no longer be available after May 31, 2022. The information you shared and used for these experiences, including Location History and Background Location, will no longer be collected after May 31, 2022. , even if you have previously activated them. “

Unfortunately, the removal of these visible features does not automatically mean that the Facebook application will stop collecting users’ location. Meta, the company behind Facebook, is practically “living” from these practices. Intentionally ambiguous, the company states that location data will continue to be collected “for other experiences”. Of course, you can turn off Facebook access to location data at any time by revoking your access rights in your iOS or Android privacy settings. But since no one knows (or is not interested in this detail), Facebook will continue to glue and capitalize as much data about its users.