The Infuriating Way Facebook is Forcing People to Download Its New App

​Facebook ​really​ wants you to download its photo app, Moments — and it's not above a little bribery to get you to do it.

According to multiple sources, the social media giant has recently started alerting its mobile app users that it will delete all of their auto-synced photos unless the user makes the move over to Moments. As an alternative, users also have the option to download a zip file of their photos through the desktop version of Facebook. 

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As ​The Verge​ explains, since 2012, the original Facebook app has allowed users to automatically upload photos from their phone's camera roll into a private Facebook album for easy storage and easy share-ability. This feature was removed from the main Facebook app and migrated over to Moments a few months ago, but it was unclear what, exactly, Facebook planned to do with photos that had previously been synced.

Now, it seems that Facebook is serving up a pretty harsh ultimatum: Either migrate over to Moments before July 7, or lose those photos forever. (It's important to note this only applies to auto-uploaded photos, not anything that was manually uploaded.)

Of course, this isn't the first time that Facebook has used a little trickery to get people to try its latest invention. A couple years back, they separated the chat function from the main app in order to get users to download Messenger. But moving over a function and getting rid of personal content aren't exactly the same league, so take this as a warning: If you have any auto-synced photos you'd like to save from the internet abyss, either download Moments or get that zip file before July 7.

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