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Facebook is NOT Photo Storage (Part 2)

facebook is not photo storage

Facebook users upload more than 3 million photos a day. That’s a lot of data to store and your facebook feed needs to load quickly or users won’t stay engaged, so to lighten the load, Facebook compresses your images. What does this mean? Your photos are tiny. Pixels are gone. Facebook was created for posting & sharing images. Facebook is not designed to store your most prized possessions. Once an image is uploaded to Facebook, it’s compressed.

what happens to photos when uploaded to facebook

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facebook is not photo storage

Regular Facebook Upload (default)

facebook is not photo storage

You can change your Facebook settings to “high resolution” when creating an album or “HD” on your phone, but high resolution equates to a 4×6 print size. If you’re ok with that, then by all means, keep using Facebook to store your images and pray that Mr. Zuckerberg hosts them forever.

facebook HD Upload

facebook is not photo storage

Because Al’s digital images are so small, I am limited to creating a 60 photo collage instaposter to display Al’s digital life. How ironic that I have made beautiful enlargements from scanning their old, archival prints. It’s the digital images that are the issue. I am already seeing signs of the “digital dark ages”.

facebook photo collage
facebook is not photo storage

Personally, I want to have options with my photos. Sometimes it takes life events like funerals to help us wake up and say, “wait a minute, I may want to see this photo someday somewhere besides Facebook“.

Vint Cerf warned us in 2015 of a “digital dark age”. His words are becoming more and more apparent as I continue to run into these issues with my dear friends and family.

Read on ….

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