Why has Facebook moved Videos under Photos?
For some unknown reason, Facebook has decided to move Videos under the Photos section in the most recent redesign. Unsurprisingly, this has caused a lot of confusion. Facebook's Help Center now even has a dedicated question for this issue: "Where are my videos?" – here's the "answer":
Your photos and videos are grouped together in the Photos section of your profile. You can get there by selecting the "Photos" filter under your profile picture.
To view videos you uploaded: Look for the "Your Photos" section. Click the "See All Videos" link in its top right corner.
To view videos you are tagged in: Look for the "Photos and Videos of You" section. Click the "View Videos of You" link in its top right corner.
In a Quora thread titled Is Facebook deprecating video?, a user recently asked what had happened to his videos; no matter where he looked on his profile, he couldn't seem to find the Videos section anymore. Previously, the Videos section was easily accessible via a link under your profile picture or via a Videos tab at the top of someone's profile.
Evan Priestley, a Facebook overengineer, responded with the following answer, worth quoting in full:
It's being merged with Photos. You can get to your uploaded videos by going to your profile -> Photos (left nav under profile picture) -> See All: Video (small text in the grey "Your Photos" header on the right side). This is quite obvious and I can only assume you didn't even try to find it since there's no way you could miss it.
You can also use the Search bar to search for the "Video" application, then click "[+ Upload Video]" (grey button on the upper right) -> "Back to My Videos" (small blue text in the upper right). Similarly, this workflow is extremely natural.
Generally, this is an intentional part of our meticulously orchestrated master plan and certainly not an oversight of any kind.
I can think of many, many ways to describe this new system, none of which come anywhere close to "quite obvious." If Facebook made this change and then renamed Photos to Media, then maybe it wouldn't need a help entry specifically for this change. To add to the confusion, Facebook Pages continue to have a separate Video tab.
This change has achieved two things: it is now harder to find the Videos section on Facebook, and even once you have found it, you'll need to make an extra click every time you want to get there. It's almost as if Facebook wants to discourage users from using videos to the service.
Videos on Facebook may cost more for the social network to maintain, and may be significantly less popular than the Photos section, but burying them from view is not in the social network's best interest. I can only hope that Facebook's "meticulously orchestrated master plan" will indeed shed some light on this change. No matter what that plan ends up being, however, I do not see why this useless change needs to be implemented while we wait.