Facebook offers its image compression tech to those who need it

Maybe you’re a developer who needs an image compression tool. Well, Facebook is opening there’s up to anyone who needs it. This open source tool is called Spectrum and it can work into iOS and Android projects. Admittedly, we’re not particularly fond of Facebook’s image compression, but for developers who can’t come up with their own tool, this could help. According to Facebook, Spectrum has "improved reliability and quality of image uploads across [its] apps" and that it can reduce file sizes for up to 15 percent while keeping the quality.

Source: Engadget

Facebook begins public testing of Messenger’s dark mode feature

If you’re fond of sending out messages in the middle of the night, you’ll probably welcome this update from Facebook. The company has finally started testing dark mode for its Messenger app. Web app developer Jane Wong reveals on Twitter, “Facebook Messenger, seemingly due to prolonged external nagging, has started public testing Dark Mode in certain countries. They have put up a fair warning that Dark Mode isn't everywhere yet so don't complain when some UI burns your eyes off.” There isn’t a specific timeline yet when it’ll be coming out but you can now see how it’s going to look like if you do get the feature and decide to use it. Having a dark mode option works on the idea that this limits screen glare and protects your peepers from effects of blue light when you use your phone in the dark or in the middle of the night.

New Facebook bug exposed millions of users’ photos, including unposted ones

Remember the days when Facebook wasn’t riddled with issues? We can’t either. The latest one is a software bug that exposed photos of up to 6.8 million users—including photos that haven’t been posted yet. According to the company several third-party apps (1,500 in total) gained access to “a broader set of photos than usual” for a 12-day period in September. Facebook said it’ll reach out to the affected users. The company explains in a blogpost, "When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos on Facebook, we usually only grant the app access to photos people share on their timeline. In this case, the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos."

On top of accessing those on your timeline, these third-party developers gained access to photos posted in places like Stories and Marketplace as well as those that have been uploaded but not posted. The company says they only store photos from incomplete posts for three days. Facebook says it’s working with the affected developers to “delete the photos from impacted users.” The company is also recommending its users to log into any apps where they shared their Facebook photos to check which photos they have access to.

Facebook Messenger begins rollout of its unsend feature to mobile users

After testing out the much requested unsend option for Facebook’s default messaging app, the feature is now rolling out to some markets—namely Poland, Bolivia, Colombia, and Lithuania—with plans to bring it to more markets as soon as possible. It’s officially being called “Remove for Everyone” and it’s available for both iOS and Android versions of Facebook Messenger app. Messages can be removed from a recipient’s inbox within the first 10 minutes after it’s been delivered. (No, it won’t work with old messages sent years ago.) And when you do choose to remove a message, a tombstone will be kept in its place to let everyone in the thread know you deleted a message. Facebook will also retain the messages for a few minutes after they are unsent to make sure you can still report it. The social network thinks this is one way to dissuade bullies from using the feature to harass other users.

Once the feature goes live here, you can unsend a message by tapping and holding on it. As long as you’re within the 10-second timeframe, you’ll see the options Remove for Everyone and Remove for You. If you decide to remove it for all users, you’ll get a pop-up that’ll alert you that the message will be permanently removed but can still be reported. Other unsend features are also reportedly being developed for Messenger, including being able to let a thread expire after a certain amount of time with all the messages being erased as well as being able to set individual messages to expire in a thread after a set time.

Source: BGR