How to stop Facebook from uploading photos

Meta’s latest feature gives Facebook the power to continuously upload your private photos to its cloud — even the ones you never intended to share. Here’s how to stop it.

In a time where internet users are goaded into giving away their data to nearly every company, Meta has decided to take it several steps further. It wants you to give Facebook access to your entire camera roll and allow it to upload your photos to its cloud.

The “feature,” spotted by TechCrunch has recently begun rolling out to users. When creating a story, a prompt pops up and asks users to opt into “cloud processing.”

While that sounds innocuous enough, it becomes less so once you read what Meta means by that. In its own words, it says:

“To create ideas for you, we’ll select media from your camera roll and upload it to our cloud on an ongoing basis, based on info like time, location, or themes.”

While it claims that the images won’t be used for ad targeting, it still doesn’t make us feel particularly good. Even more so when you delve into the Meta AI terms of Service and see their liability clause.

If you opt into this new feature, just remember that you’re giving Meta full access to all the images on your camera roll, including ones you most definitely don’t want anyone else to see. And not only are you giving it access, you’re giving it the right to upload those images into its cloud.

Considering Meta’s history with protecting user data, we’d strongly suggest opting out of cloud computing. After all, it was less than a year ago that we found out Meta had been storing over half a billion users’ passwords in plain text.

And, considering Meta also owns Instagram, it wouldn’t be unheard of for the changes to apply to Instagram as well. If you use either app, be sure you read any pop-up feature opt-ins — companies frequently try to downplay the extent to which they’ll use your data.

Three smartphone screens display Facebook's story creation and privacy settings, including text and toggle options for camera roll suggestions and cloud processing.

How to revoke Facebook’s cloud processing permissions

In the event that you — or someone you know — opts in and wants back out, you can revoke consent at any time. Here’s how to do it:

Important: These settings can only be modified on a mobile device, like your iPhone, via the Facebook app. You cannot revoke permissions from a desktop browser.