Deleting a Facebook Account: Here's How

Every day a good deed. This could become difficult if this means deleting social media profiles. In the sense of data protection, but also to curb Facebook's dubious business practices, my Facebook account is now being deleted.

Introduction

Spoiler: Yes, life without Facebook works, and it doesn't cause any harm or losses. On the contrary, everything gets better, except for Facebook.

Facebook/Meta was convicted by a German court to pay 500 euros in damages to a Facebook user, because web scraping from Facebook profiles wasn't really prevented (LG Lübeck, verdict from 25.05.2023 – 15 O 74/22). The sins of Meta are now very long.

Almost everyone in Germany seems to be active on Facebook. Why? Because everyone is on Facebook. Why again? For that reason. Apparently, Facebook is essential for life. Apparently, Facebook advertising is essential for business success. Bullshit. More important is to first solve the fundamental problems of selling before getting to the finer points.

You will soon learn how to live a better life without Facebook. Delete your Facebook account, all Facebook apps, and feel the relief rising within you. But first, a short detour.

Facebook has recently demonstrated the following:

The own usage terms were not applied by Facebook worldwide for a million "influencers". (Facebook Files)
The data of many Facebook users was not secure and were hacked by hackers and made available for sale
Donald Trump could influence the election with the help of Facebook
The Newsfeed Algorithm of Facebook favors negative headlines and divisive statements
Facebook harms the German economy, because data protection rules are not taken quite so precisely
Facebook hinders and threatens researchers who want to show how the Facebook algorithm works ([1])

And why are so many people still on Facebook then? Because there are so many cute cat pictures there. And because companies can make a lot of money on Facebook. Who actually started that rumor?

Some facts about Facebook

Before the GDPR, I ran advertising on Google and Facebook with my team, successfully. The success on Facebook was however very limited, despite the perfect market at the time. I claim that Facebook advertising only makes sense for a few companies that have the right market and the right advisors. Sorry, I forgot that there are indeed thousands of great consultants who certainly know how it works. It worked better on other advertising platforms, by the way. As I said, this is probably also dependent on the target group. Facebook, in any case, does not stand for a particularly serious medium.

At that time we also professionally operated a Facebook Business Page, known as a Fanpage. We created posts every day with professional illustrations and texts. Ultimately, this resulted in work that was increased even further by annoying comments that needed to be answered.

At the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic in Germany, I started a free online aid project for the domestic economy. The aid project was a complete success. Alone for a city with 20,000 inhabitants, over €30,000 in sales were generated through my platform within a few weeks. Also on Facebook, I tried to increase the success by spreading the message. The result was that many people shared and liked my posts on Facebook. But no one took any action to advance the project. Apparently, many have equated their actions of sharing and liking with I'm doing something for others.

If someone had entered their birthday on Facebook, I would regularly see dozens of short texts like Happy Birthday or masses of these Thumbs Up symbols. I never understood what good this was supposed to do. The celebrant is probably extremely delighted that someone has thrown them a completely well-meaning, boring two-word message in response to an automatic Facebook notification.

In some groups, anyone could ask a question on the topic that fit the group. So there were groups on data protection as well as programming or online marketing. The questions were sometimes quite silly, but often justified. A personal research on the internet would have brought up the answer. On the other hand, I got answers without any use to my questions, which I couldn't find anything about in the net. Many questions were answered through discussions and the exchange of opinions.

Posts in Facebook groups, which were accompanied by a link to my own website, were significantly less clicked on than on other networks in my cases. My theory is that Facebook is not a quality medium. I'm revealing something quite exciting here: whoever makes an effort to do things differently or better than others will have more success. "Everyone" does advertising on Facebook. If everyone does something, it has the same effect as if no one does it. Just using platforms that fit well with your own product is enough for success. Most of the time, this platform that fits well with your product is not Facebook, in my opinion.

Sometimes someone had also issued a commission and wanted to find a service provider who was first definitely super competent and secondly super cheap, ideally free of charge. In the end, it will probably often not be a commission that is awarded, but the free tips are collected and combined into some kind of result.

Whoever looks for events in the area can use Facebook or not bother. There are also events in the area elsewhere, for example, in a search engine. Sometimes Facebook shows that a friend is attending a particular event. Maybe I'll go there too, thinks Facebook. It's possible, but you could find out better through classic communication.

Regarding friends: No, not all of them are my friends, what is referred to as a friend on Facebook. Rather, there are often data thieves or other criminals among them. Also, crawlers can scrape profiles and grab publicly made information such as email address or phone number to use for Social Engineering-attacks (Spear Phishing etc.). Did you know that one can easily write an email with almost any sender, without the recipient having the possibility to recognize the forgery?

A friend of mine used to post his birthday invitations on Facebook in a private group until he met his wife. This led to many people missing the invitation or some information being missing because the invitee had typed everything quickly into their phone. How lovely is a personal invitation.

Many small businesses have no own website, but only a Facebook business page. Their company is practically tied to their Facebook account. They may be subject to an internet conglomerate for life in many cases. How sad is that? Being dependent on an American, profit-driven internet conglomerate that tramples human rights (see Facebook Files).

Delete Facebook Account

NB: The screenshots are in German, but you should be able to guess where to click.

Now let's get to the important part. Deleting your own Facebook account is quick and easy, at least getting started. The following screenshots show how to do it on a PC. It's probably similar on a smartphone. If you can't manage it, feel free to message me.

If you also have Fan Pages, i.e., business pages, you will find a section below explaining how to delete them. If you are the only administrator of a Fan Page, it should be automatically deleted with your account.

To delete your Facebook account, first call up the menu (PC view): or First, call up the menu (PC view) for deleting the Facebook account: or First, open the menu (PC view):*Deleting the Facebook account Note: The translation of "Menü" to English can be either "menu", "menu bar", or "options". I've used "menu" in the first two options and "menu (PC view)" to make it clear that this is referring to a PC, not a mobile device. In the third option, I've simply translated "Menü" to "menu" for brevity:

Access the Facebook menu (PC view).

After that, click on the settings.

Now click on Settings again.

Now we are close to being able to live a life without Facebook. In the following menu, you will find the option to delete your Facebook account.

Now the following options appear.

Triggering the function to delete one's Facebook account.

After clicking on "View", next to "Deactivate and Delete" appears the following image:

Now a click on the option "Konto löschen" helps further. The picture changes now to the following:

A click on the button "Weiter und Konto löschen" forces us to scroll down all the way again:

Feature to delete your own Facebook account.

There you find the long-awaited button Delete Account. It's done in an instant. After clicking on the button, a password query appears: Safety first, that's Facebook's motto.

Before taking this step, it couldn't hurt to post a notice in various Facebook groups or on your own Facebook profile to encourage others to also delete their accounts.

Have fun you all on Facebook, or my hope is that everyone will think once about whether Facebook is really as useful as many believe. For me, Facebook has such little benefit that the disadvantages outweigh it. The disadvantages are particularly the pitiful protection of one's own data, profit-driven business practices of Facebook, therefore the division of society and unnecessary spread of lies + hate speech, plus damage to our domestic economy because most companies here adhere to laws more than Facebook does. I on now deleting my Facebook account and will lead a life with more time for the truly important, useful, and beautiful things. The end of my support for this questionable platform will probably drag on for another month because Facebook does everything to delay the final deletion of my profile. But I will be brave. Are you too? It's not that hard.
Farewell to Facebook.

Don't worry. Facebook doesn't delete these posts immediately, it takes days, weeks, or even months. You also don't have to worry about stupid comments, because they won't be read anymore, the account is gone. Life can be so nice.

After entering the password for the Facebook account in the now appearing pop-up, Facebook cautiously asks again before one commits the biggest mistake of their life:

Finally done. The Facebook account is in the process of being deleted. It's strange how everything feels so non-final on Facebook. Now definitely don't log back into Facebook, otherwise it was all for nothing. That's what the login page now says, because you're logged out after initiating the deletion process.

Thank you for this opportunity, Facebook.

The best thing is to delete the Facebook app from all mobile devices. This has the additional advantage that more storage space becomes available, and battery life as well as network load are saved. An app can be deleted, at least on an Android device, by holding down the icon for a long time and clicking on Uninstall. Don't forget to remove the Facebook Messenger either, because it will no longer be needed. If someone wants to get in touch with you, they'll surely find another way. Unless it wasn't important anyway.

Facebook Fanpage löschen

If you have Fan Pages that are managed by more than just you, you can delete them explicitly as follows. If you are the only administrator, the business page should already disappear with the account deletion described above.

On the PC, click on the symbol marked with a red rectangle in the image, located in the upper right corner:

The start of a better life without Facebook.

Clicking on the menu Pages then leads to the management of your own fan pages.

Now call up the fanpage to be deleted by clicking on its name. If annoying popups appear, click them away accordingly. When asked about WhatsApp or whether you really want to leave WhatsApp Ads, click on Leave.

Yes, we don't even want to enter WhatsApp, so we're leaving.

Yes, we want to leave WhatsApp and not connect it to our company page at all.

Now in the menu More, click on the menu point _Edit tabs:

Thereafter, a page with actions appears. Click on General, which displays further options on the right in the area:

Option to delete a Business Page on Facebook.

Scroll down to the right area all the way, click on "Remove Page". Sometimes the view jumps back up. Scroll down again. Facebook won't confuse us that easily.

Then click on the appearing text <Page name> permanently delete and confirm the security inquiry.

Security check before deleting a Facebook Fan Page.

Done. The page has been deleted, or almost, because it can be unnecessarily restored within 14 days.

For security reasons, Facebook reminds you once again that this irreversible action can be undone. But who would want that?

We will certainly not do that and permanently delete the Facebook page by leaving it inactive for 14 days.

Facebook now has less information with which this company can enrich itself at the expense of others. Congratulations!

Conclusion

Now that you hopefully no longer have a Facebook account, what happens if someone insists on inviting you to a party or something similar on Facebook? Ask if they can't send a carrier pigeon instead. That seems to be the only alternative to Facebook.

What do you do if you want to know what's happening in your area over the weekend? I'm stumped. Besides Facebook, I can't really think of any other way to find that out.

You have heard that Facebook wants to create 10,000 new jobs in Europe to program the Metaverse. It's best not to support this plan. Ideally, either no solution of this kind will emerge if it is not needed. Or another company, which probably seems more sympathetic than Facebook, will take care of it.

Do you know Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria? He was the biggest drug lord in the 1980s and comes from Colombia. Under his leadership, the Medellín cartel emerged. Pablo Escobar had donated millions of dollars to poor neighborhoods near him so that training centers, kindergartens, and playgrounds could be built. Before that, he had thousands of people killed, terrorized many more, and made even more drug addicts. So how should the "good deed" of Pablo Escobar be evaluated?