Facebook to Remove Nearby Friends & Other Location Based Features

As a surprise move for Facebook, Meta has decided to discontinue a few location-based features on the social platform for users soon. These will include the Nearby Friends feature on Facebook that lets users locate and track their Facebook friends’ real-time locations, considering the feature is enabled. Additionally, the company will discontinue other location-dependent features like weather alerts, location history, and background location on the platform soon. Let’s check out the details below.

Facebook to Discontinue Location-Based Features Soon

Facebook has reportedly started notifying users about the discontinuation of the features via a notification on its Android and iOS apps. A Twitterati recently took to the Elon Musk-owned platform to share a screenshot of the Facebook notification. The screenshot suggests that the Nearby Friends feature and Weather alerts on Facebook will be discontinued on May 31, 2022. You can check out the screenshot attached right below.

Facebook to Discontinue Nearby Friends, Weather Alerts, and Other Location Features Soon — Image: Aj (Twitter)

To recall, Nearby Friends was introduced back in 2014 as a way for people to get access to their friends’ real-time locations provided the location permissions were granted. This would allow people to detect nearby friends and probably make plans to meet them.

The notification from Facebook also mentioned that the location information of users, including their Location History and Background Location, will not be collected after the said date. Users will be able to download their Location History from the Access Your Information section until August 1, 2022. Following the deadline, their data will be deleted from the social platform’s database.

However, it is worth mentioning that the Meta-owned social giant will continue to collect the location information of users for “other experiences” on the platform. Also, it is currently unknown why the company decided to make this move.

You should note that the decision to discontinue the location-focused features comes just months after the social platform started losing daily active users (DAUs) for the first time in its history.