Facebook Says It’s Discontinuing ‘Nearby Friends’ Alongside Other Location Features This Month

Meta-owned Facebook announced to its users on Thursday that it would be discontinuing its Nearby Friends functionality, reports Matt Navarra.

In the same way, the app confirmed how there would be a series of other location-themed features being disabled very soon. Hence, these changes are expected to take place as early as this month. However, it must be kept in mind that the platform failed to announce the reason behind these sudden amendments, adding an element of unclarity to the situation.

But some tech experts do believe the move was coming soon as Facebook says even the information that’s related to features like these would also be removed through all of its servers too.

Recently, many Facebook users of both Android and iOS had been receiving notifications about the discontinuation of Nearby Friends. For those who may not be aware, this is another functionality that helps so many users make their location visible to other friends on the app.

This is not the only announcement made by the popular social media giant recently. We also saw the company gearing up for the removal of its Time Alerts, Background Location, as well its Location History. But again, when is another question as Facebook has only revealed ‘going away soon' in its announcement.

But we can expect Nearby Friends and the app’s location-themed features to be gone by May 31, 2022, as the company mentioned in their public circular.

Facebook says some information relating to location history, which assists users in getting a customized map for the places they’ve visited, could still be present for collection to make the most of their experience. However, users are still given the choice to disable this feature and that means preventing access to their current location via a change in their privacy settings of course.


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