Over the years Facebook has grown and grown, going from a way to like your friend’s photos to a way to manage pretty much every aspect of your life. Now it seems, however, that Facebook might be starting to shrink rather than grow as as the social media giant has begun sending out notifications to app users informing them of a number of services that are to be discontinued.
The biggest feature facing the axe is Nearby Friends, which lets you share your location so that your friends on the app can see where you are. There isn’t really any explanation for the move either, with the notification merely saying:
“Nearby Friends and Weather alerts will no longer be available after May 31, 2022. Information you shared that was used for these experiences, including Location History and Background Location, will stop being collected after May 31, 2022, even if you have previously enabled them.”
As well as Nearby Friends and local Weather alerts, other location-based services like Location History and Background location are also due to go. Facebook says that if you want to download the data related to these services you have until August 1, 2022. Facebook says that all related data will be deleted after that date and so will be unavailable to download.
If you think this news means that Facebook will no longer be tracking your location, think again. As ever, Facebook wants to know as much about you as possible and so will continue to track the information so that it can offer you other services and experiences. Make of that what you will. Of course, you can change your privacy settings to restrict Facebook’s access to your personal data. You can learn how to block Facebook from tracking your data in our handy guide. Of course, if you wanted to go further you could read our guide to deleting your Facebook account too.
