BeReal is Great

I don’t have a lot of social media, but I decided to get BeReal because: A) I wanted to try social media again and B) I liked BeReal’s anti-social media take on social media. No ads, no algorithms, no popularity contests or likes. Maybe it’s too early to say, but BeReal feels more privacy and wellbeing focused than its American counterparts. More on that later.

BeReal took off right as I joined, and for a while I really liked it! The combined front and rear photos (taken with a slight delay¹) are a fun way to capture everything thats going on.

BeReal was just taking off when I joined in May 2022 (Green Line), and by October it was peaking in popularity, even being picked up by SNL (Purple Line). Data from Google Trends

Here’s some of my BeReals:

Walking across campus at sunset

Gardening!!

While bouldering

Troubleshooting a 3D printer :(

Memories

BeReal also keeps copies of your old posts in Memories and uses them for an end of year rewind à la Snapchat ² . From here you can download your old photos, but only one at a time.

GDPR Request

BeReal is pretty cool because they allow you to request a copy of your data or delete your data, even if you live in an area of the world where that isn’t required (like me).

From the BeReal Privacy Policy:

Privacy is a fundamental human right. That means every person that uses our Services, irrespective of where they reside, can expect the same things from us. Whether you are in Europe, one of the 50 U.S. States, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, Asia Pacific, or anywhere in between, you can:

• Delete Your Account through the settings in the applications or by contacting privacy support;
• Understand who we share your data with by reading this list of service providers and partners or by contacting privacy support;
• Get a copy of your information by contacting privacy support;
• Correct your information by using the controls in the application or by contacting privacy support;
• Appeal a decision related to your information by contacting privacy support;
• Ask a question about our privacy practices by contacting privacy support;
• Contact our Office of Data Protection by contacting privacy support.

Sweet!

Verify Your Identity

Once you contact BeReal ([email protected]) for a copy of your data, you’ll need to verify some information. I had to verify my: phone number, date of birth, device model. Additionally, they required either submitting a my phone bill or a photo ID.

Download your Files

If all goes well, in a few days, you’ll receive a zip file with a structure like this:

.
├── Photos
│   ├── bereal
│   ├── post
│   ├── profile
│   └── realmoji
├── blocked-users.json
├── comments.json
├── friend-requests.json
├── friends.json
├── memories.json
├── posts.json
├── push-settings.json
├── push-tokens.json
├── realmojis.json
├── terms.json
└── user.json

Within the files you’ll find .json files with information about how you interacted with BeReal, and within the Photos directory you’ll find current and previous realmoji and profile pictures. BeReal posts are split between the bereal and post directories, and these are the only photos I chose to import.

Add Them to an Album

The photos will be in the highest quality available, with no BeReal watermark, and no need to pick between the front and rear views. The metadata for the files will show them all as created on the same day when your data request was processed. I like this because they show up in the same place in my photo library. It’s a nice momento from the time when I had BeReal. I also added all the photos to a new album (BeingReal), to make sure they’d be easily findable in the future.