Facebook Live videos will now auto-delete after 30 days

Meta announced some new policies for Facebook live broadcasts and it’s going to lead to a lot of deleted videos.

On Tuesday, the company announced in a blog post that all Facebook live broadcasts will only stay on Facebook Pages or profiles for 30 days, after which they’ll be deleted and removed from Facebook. The new policy goes into effect starting on Wednesday, Feb. 19.

All user’s live videos older than 30 days won’t immediately be deleted and removed from Facebook but users will need to act fast if they want to keep them.

“Before your archival live videos are deleted, you will be notified by email and in the app, and from then you’ll have 90 days to download or transfer your content,” the blog post read, noting that the platform is “launching new tools to make downloading your previous live videos easier.”

If you’d like to keep your live videos, you have a few options. You can download them to your personal device individually or in bulk, transfer them to your cloud storage individually or in bulk, or convert the videos into a new Reel.

It’s unclear why Meta is making this change, but it comes at a time in which the company is prioritizing vertical videos and Reels. Pressuring users into converting their live videos into reels lest they be lost forever could be seen as a pretty transparent move.