
Should I stay or should I go, from Meta’s social media platforms? That is what some Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users have been wondering since Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s shocking announcement in January, in response to President Trump’s return to the White House.
The company changed its rules on harmful content, such as hate speech, in what critics condemn as appeasement of Trump and disregard for public safety. The platform also abandoned its fact-checking program, replacing it with an ineffective crowdsourced solution.
The changes have renewed interest among some users about deleting their Meta social media accounts. If you want to stop using platforms owned by Meta, here are some pointers:
SAVE YOUR DATA
Before deleting your Facebook account, you should download a copy of all your personal information, which includes details about your activity on the platform, things you have shared and data that the company has collected about you.
You will have to go to your settings or the accounts center — the master control panel for all your Meta accounts — where you can choose to download everything or just items such as your profile, posts, messages, comments and reactions, and list of friends, even the ads you have clicked on and IP addresses you have used to connect to Facebook.
You can download information from a certain date range, such as the past month or six months, or for all the time you have had an account. If you are downloading photos, you can select their quality level: low, medium, high.
For security purposes, you will only have four days to download your file. The process is similar for Instagram and Threads users.
Instagram users will need a password to download and access files and it could take up to 30 days to receive a download link by email, the platform says on its help page.
Maybe you do not want to download all your personal information but instead want to get any photos and videos you have posted. Facebook provides a separate option to transfer these files to another online service, with options including Google Photos, Dropbox, or Photobucket.
STAYING IN TOUCH
A tip for Facebook users: before you pull the plug, check if you have friends or connections you do not want to lose complete contact with.
Send them a message asking for their phone, email, or other non-Meta contact details. You could also make a final post telling people that you are leaving, though there is a chance not everyone will see it.
TAKE A BREAK
If you are not ready to go all the way, Facebook allows users to temporarily shut down their accounts in case they just want to take a break from social media.
You can do this through the account center, where you can click on the Personal details section, and then the Account ownership, and control setting.
Temporarily deactivating an account means other users will not see it anymore, but your posts, photos, and videos will not be deleted and you can still use Facebook Messenger. You can reactivate the account at any time.
Do not change your mind too often: Instagram and Threads users can only temporarily deactivate their accounts once a week.
DELETION
Ready to take the plunge and delete your account permanently? After tying up any loose ends, head back to the accounts center, click the Personal details section, and then Account ownership and control, where you can choose to delete it.
Once you have triggered the deletion process, you have got 30 days to change your mind, which you can do by logging back into your account and clicking the Cancel Deletion button.
“After 30 days, your account and all your information will be permanently deleted, and you won’t be able to retrieve your information,” Facebook warns on its help center.
Take note: Deleting a Threads account will not have any effect on your corresponding Instagram account. But deleting an Instagram account will also result in the deletion of the linked Threads account because Instagram accounts are used to manage Threads accounts.
WHAT ABOUT WHATSAPP?
Meta also owns WhatsApp, although Zuckerberg’s content policy changes are not likely to affect the chat app.
Similar to Meta’s social platforms, WhatsApp users can export a copy of their chat history or ask for information on their settings or channels.
If you decide you want to get rid of WhatsApp and perhaps switch to competing chat services like iMessage or Signal, it is easy to do through the app’s settings.
Deleting WhatsApp will erase your account info, your chat history backup, and your presence from any chat groups as well as any channels you set up where you are the only admin.