#Facebook clean-up check-list for people who cannot #deletefacebook

Due to the fuck-up of Facebook I decided to drastically remove my contact with it.
I am not from the pack that just now discovers “amazed” that on Facebook you are the product. My upbringing as an East-European kid in a communist dictatorship made me aware early in life that there is no free meal. As we say around here “if something seems to good to be true something is wrong” or when somethings is “cheap and beautiful” we always wonder “where is the catch”.

I am still not deleting Facebook due to the “social network” component. It is still the only way to keep in contact with a lot of former classmates, childhood friends, relatives and foreign friends. If you are from Eastern Europe and have a job that made you visit several countries this is extra important because you tend to have those people scattered all over the world. If I look through my almost 400 friends list they are located in almost 40 different countries.

So not being able to delete the account this is my cleanup checklist.

1. Menu Settings Apps. Delete all apps linked to Facebook. There are alternative ways to login to an app if you really need it.
2. Menu Settings Adds . Delete all the Ads categories. This is a huge section and Facebook evil UX design made it intentional very hard. Basically you have to click hundred of times on slow loading tiles with add categories you were placed into.
3. Home Left sidebar – Pages Feeds. Remove all Pages Feeds, they feed you crap but also can have access to your data.
4. Home Left sidebar – Pages. Unlike all the pages. Again this is made extra hard by the Facebook UI. You have to unlike individually each page you ever liked.
5. Home Left sidebar – Groups. Leave all groups. Again this is made extra hard by the Facebook UI. You have to leave individually each group you ever joined.
6. Home Left sidebar – Saved. Remove all your saved pages.
7. Profile Sections – Likes. Remove all the likes. Again super hard and super time consuming.
8. Profile Sections – Photos. Remove all photos leave just the profile one if you want. Un-tag yourself from other people photos. Again a super evil UI that makes is as hard as possible to do this.
9. Profile Sections – Other. Go through all the other sections like Music, Video, Books etc. and delete all content.
10. Settings – Privacy. Read carefully every category and put the access on none or Friends.
11. Settings – Timeline and Tagging Settings. Change all permissions to Friends or Unavailable. Activate the Review for tagging.
12. Do not post content to Facebook. Do you want to share a story, an opinion a picture ? Make yourself a blog, if possible self hosted. Any content posted on Facebook becomes their property, so why should you donate your work to some billionaire. You can always just share that blog post on Facebook (I am doing that) and just use Facebook as a redirection. You can manage your own adds and you keep the whole property of your data and work.
13. Do not use Facebook application. Under no circumstances use the Facebook application on IOS or Android. It records phone calls , sms-es and tries to mine as much information as possible from your phone.
14. Do not use Facebook Messenger application Uninstall the Facebook Messenger application is one of the best “spyware” developed.
15. Delete your Facebook Messenger history. Any message, file you ever sent or received with the Facebook Messenger is archived by Facebook. To delete them go to Home Left sidebar – Messenger. Each message thread must be deleted individually.
16. Home Left sidebar – On This Day – also known as Facebook Memories – is one of the social network’s most annoying features. It is filling your news feed with old posts targeted to get reactions from you so Facebook can profile you better. A good profiled account information sells better to the highest bidder. To disable this go to “Home Left sidebar – On This Day” then on the Notification button (top right) choose “None”.

I hope this is a useful list.