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How to permanently delete a Facebook account

Here is the shortcut link to the official Facebook account deletion page.

A deceased member's account can be memorialized or removed.

Delete Facebook

Can't escape Facebook? Use it via a web browser. Delete the apps.

Free yourself from the Doomsday Machine that leaks your personal data.

DuckDuckGo search window captioned 'Our browser never tracks you'.

Facebook launders toxicity

The social network profits from polarization as it validates and exploits our biases.

It's divisive and exploitative to the point of being complicit in genocide.

Social media is a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures - Shoshana Zuboff.

Facebook is the sociocultural equivalent of a fossil-fuel company.

Before you delete your account

Revoking permissions makes it easy to spot which apps rely on your Facebook account. These can then be fixed to avoid future access issues.

The Facebook account deletion process

Your account will be deactivated for one month (it was two weeks). After this period it will be permanently deleted. You have plenty of time to change your mind.

Do not sign in to your account during this time unless you wish to cancel the deletion request.

Don't be fooled into a deactivation request. Deactivation is not deletion.

What happens to your data?

In theory, deleting your account removes all Facebook data related to you. In reality it's more complicated, taking about 90 days.

Allegations of complicity with National Security Agency surveillance and repeated breaches suggest that your data may never truly be deleted.

Backup your data before deletion if you'd like a copy.

You can still cleanse your Facebook presence for everyone else,

Leaving social data behind

As hard as you try, some personally identifiable information may remain. This could be something as simple as your name on a message, unless you're Mark Zuckerberg.

You have little control over this or what others share about you in future. The most you can realistically do is ask your friends to respect your privacy.

Data shared with apps and advertisers is with them forever. As a Facebook user you are leaving behind a valuable personal data footprint.

What to do next?

Facebook can track non-users via the like button and other similar means. You can minimise this and protect your privacy.

You should rethink your relationship with Google and Twitter.

Meta owns social

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, WhatsApp and can share data between these assets.

Keep this in mind when using their apps.

Enjoy your freedom

Facebook was founded in 2004. Their leadership has had well over a decade to learn from their privacy blunders. They have consistently failed to reign in their greed.

Demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists … is like asking … a giraffe to shorten its neck, or a cow to give up chewing. These demands are existential threats that violate the basic mechanisms of the entity's survival. - Shoshana Zuboff.


Explore Facebook's problematic history

Free speech and paid political ads

Whatever your opinion on Facebook's policies, the company's choices impact society worldwide.

Free speech is not the same as paid speech.

Paid political ads and similar topics need immediate discussion and regulation. These systems are broken and open to abuse by malicious actors with sufficient funds.

All power corrupts;

Facebook continues to dominate. It's important to consider their future.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely - Sir John Dalberg-Acton.


Web/app developers

If you produce content on the web, you can make a massive difference.

Sites could be liable for helping Facebook secretly track your web browsing.

This ethical approach would make it difficult for Facebook to track users around the web. App developers, you can help too.


On a lighter note

The following links are to amusing fake stories… obviously?