Facebook addresses antitrust concerns with new tool that lets you transfer photos to Google

The launch follows proposed legislation that would require large platforms like Facebook to let their users easily move their data to other services.

Facebook has previously written about the importance of letting users transfer their data to other platforms, a feature known as data portability. The company released a white paper on the topic in September after CEO Mark Zuckerberg asked for regulation guaranteeing data portability in a March op-ed in The Washington Post.

Facebook already lets users download a file containing all their data, but it's not easy to transfer that data to a rival social network.

The new feature also comes as Facebook faces multiple investigations into its competitive practices from federal regulators and a large group of state attorneys general. Since anti-monopoly action has traditionally been determined based on harm to consumers, Facebook's introduction of data portability tools could assuage some antitrust concerns by giving users the option to freely and easily leave if they are unhappy with Facebook's services.The company might argue that the feature will make it easier for new competitors to spring up if users can take their Facebook data elsewhere.