Leaving Facebook for good?

Sometime back in 2016 or 2017 Facebook reminded me about something that happened many years earlier. Events that I didn't want to be reminded of. So I got curious: "How easy or hard will it be to delete all my data from Facebook, without actually deleting my account?". So I started deleting my data. On february 11, Martin Gundersen , reporter at Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) did an article (Norwegian) about my efforts after approximately a year trying to delete my data. On july 20, 2018, GDPR came into Norwegian law.

Today, on October 31, 2022, I still haven't been able to delete all my data from my Facebook account. There is no way I can see Facebook being compliant with GDPR, even today.

Options for removing data are still not available, they are hidden, or require enormous manual effort to actually delete data. I have many, many times used the options for requesting a complete archive of all my data from Facebook. I have downloaded my data, only to find that the downloads have expanded with more information previously not included. I have seen discrepancies between the downloaded data & the data available online with Facebook. Even my latest download today on October 31, 2022, has differences between the downloaded the data & data available online with Facebook.

In the complete data set (...) I downloaded today, I see differences between downloaded archive & online data in several areas.

My list of event responses is short in downloaded archive, while several times more event responses are shown online. My downloaded archive shows I've made a single payment, while online it doesn't show.

In my posts / comments section, there are still visible posts all the way back from 2010 up to now. I've spent hours, days, perhaps weeks, trying to delete my history. It looks like I've deleted everything, only to find later more posts & comments show up.

I cannot delete the list of groups I've been a member of. I cannot delete the list of all friends I've removed or rejected friend requests. I see a list of approximately 30-40 topics used for displaying ads to me, based on my Facebook activity, but I cannot seem to edit or delete the list. Neither can I delete the list of "recent" profile views, events, groups and marketplace.

The downloaded archive contains several videos which I cannot watch, but online they are nowhere to be found.

I've edited my list of "interests" that Facebook have decided throughout the years that I have. Some are true, others are completely impossible to understand. Editing & deleting them made me realize I just spent time assisting Facebook in improving their ad targeting profile for me. Likewise when removing friends & rejecting friend requests, removing ads, adjusting my ad preferences and more.

This has been 5-6 interesting years trying to delete my Facebook data without deleting my profile. I can only conclude I haven't been able to do so, and honestly I cannot see Facebook being GDPR compliant when I still lack tools to delete my data. Facebook tells me data for a given time period has been completely deleted, but then even worse: Activity that I have deleted shows up again. Again and again and again. Over the years more information has been added to the downloadable archives you can request, so whenever I thought I had finally deleted all data for a given month or year, I only had to wait a couple of weeks to see more data reappear.

So am I leaving Facebook? Well, my account is of little to use for me, except wishing people a happy birthday every now and then. There are better ways to do that. Reducing my use of Facebook & not following anyone has done wonders for my mental health. At least that's how I feel: it's been a drug that didn't do good, and it takes time to recover.

My main concern now is that even if I delete my account, I'm afraid my data will remain & Facebook will keep tracking me with a noname "shadow" profile. Once you're in, you can't get out. I think Cliff Stoll was correct about having second thoughts on the information highway.