For a long time now, Facebook has allowed you to delete photos that you upload. Since that “feature” was added the main problem has been that when you delete your pictures, they don’t actually get deleted. Instead, any reference is removed from your Facebook account, but the pictures could technically still by found by URL if known.
This has finally changed though as Facebook now actually lets you delete pictures and when this is done, they will “eventually” be removed from the Facebook CDN (content delivery network).
The catch is that Facebook uses a CDN to cache images and distribute them around various data centres. We hear that in some cases it will take up to 30 days to actually see the URL links to pictures deleted although there are a number of factors that are taken in to consideration and the actual time will often be less. Ars Technica tested recently and found that pictures were removed in two days.
Although it still isn’t instant, at least pictures do actually get removed eventually after you hit the delete photo button. Remember that when you do hit delete, users will stop seeing the picture(s) though unless they know the direct URL which is what may stay active for a few days (up to a month).
It took Facebook 3 years to get to this point, so finally they are starting to catch up with the likes of Twitter and other services which have an instant and complete removal after delete.
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.