So far, Facebook has only announced the broad data-minimization initiative through in-app alerts and emails to users.
Because Facebook's mobile applications won't be able to monitor your position in the background after May 31, you won't be able to get notifications about friends nearby or approaching weather changes. After August, Facebook will delete its data of users' location history.
According to 9to5Mac, the social network began informing users of the major data-minimization move in a simple way: alerts in users' applications who have activated Nearby Friends and other background-location-dependent services, as well as email warnings.
"We're letting you know that certain goods and services will no longer be accessible after May 31, 2022, since you've previously utilized Nearby Friends, Weather notifications, Location History, or Background Location," states an email received to one reader. "Even if you previously enabled Location History and Background Location, the information you supplied that was utilized for these experiences will no longer be collected after May 31, 2022."
The message also stated that Facebook will continue to collect certain location data as permitted by its data policy (i.e., data acquired by the app while you use it) and that the reader's location history will be erased soon.
"You can access and download your information before August 1, 2022, if you wish to see or erase your existing Location History," it states. "If you do nothing after this date, your current Location History information will be removed immediately."
That email links to a Facebook notification about location history; we clicked it on two devices and got "This content isn't accessible right now" problems.
We reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this page whenever we hear back.
In 2014, Facebook introduced Nearby Friends, calling the feature "voluntary" in its own release. If another friend who had enabled Nearby Friends was in the same area as you, it would alert you. I only ever got the warning after I'd already run into the buddy-in issue, so I turned it off some years ago.
Facebook's applications required tracking your location even when you weren't using them in order for Nearby Friends and weather alerts to perform as stated. As a result, the corporation now has a massive quantity of geographic data.
The widespread selling of location data by wireless sector businesses has stoked fears about the dangers of massive databases of people's movements in recent years. The Center for Democracy & Technology, for example, published a study in December 2021 that detailed how frequently law enforcement and national-security organizations bought this information.
This isn't simply a problem with smartphones; wireless providers must also fix your position in order to connect your phone—and then store that data for up to five years. Courts did not need police to acquire a warrant to access previous cell-site location data until a 2018 Supreme Court opinion.
Facebook finally provided options to deactivate background location tracking, which you can also disable in Android and iOS system settings. Before making 18-month auto-delete the norm for new accounts, it has yet to adopt an automated data-deletion function like the one Google introduced in 2019.
Facebook, on the other hand, has decided to deactivate the entire service.