Part of the work we do here is looking after social media for various clients via our Ignyte Creative brand and one aspect of that is managing Facebook pages, so naturally, the #DeleteFacebook movement has caught our eyes. Partly because, on a personal level, Facebook is my least favourite social media and I regularly deactivate to get away from having to look at whatever relationship meltdown old school friends are going through or which meme my mum has just discovered, but if you’re running a business, Facebook can be a great way to keep in touch with customers.
If you look at the news and other social media platforms, you’ll see that Facebook is under a lot of flack at the moment and rightfully so. The network has found itself caught up in the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where an alleged data breach has seen reports of millions of Facebook user’s information being allegedly misused to target election ads. It is reported that Cambridge Analytica, who is a data analytics firm, gained access to data of Facebook users through third-party apps. Obviously, this is a BIG DEAL and many people are encouraging Facebook users to ditch the platform amid privacy concerns. For those of you who rely on Facebook for business contacts or your Farmville addiction, don’t worry, there are guides available to better your user experience and offer a bit more protection to your information.
One of the easiest ways to protect your data and continue using Facebook is to not use your Facebook profile to log into other apps, for instance, AirBnB, CandyCrush, Goodreads, Tinder and other apps all use Facebook logins to allow you to gain access. Doing this allows said app and Facebook to exchange information about you and that information can be misused, like for instance, in elections. To stop Facebook from accessing this information, you can go to the settings menu, and change your preferences in Account Settings where you can edit or disable this feature of third-party apps.
Other things you can do include changing your privacy information by going to settings and doing a Privacy Checkup, which gives you the chance to edit your information and delete anything you don’t want to be public information.
You can also turn off your location services when not necessary, these third-party apps can use your location by synching up to Facebook, so for extra security, only use your location services when you need to.
If you’re still not convinced and want to leave the platform, if nothing else but to stick it to Zuckerburg, then you need to make sure you’re selecting the right option. Facebook does allow you to leave the platform but it prefers you to deactivate rather than delete. Deactivating will mean your profile remains, but it won’t be viewable by other Facebook users, your account reappears when you log in to anything using your Facebook credentials, including external apps, so it can come back without you realising if you’re logging into your CandyCrush app. If you do want to delete completely, you can do so under your settings, just remember it takes a few weeks for your account to be deleted and can be up to three months before your information is wiped from their servers.
So, should you remove yourself from Facebook? Well… That depends on your reasoning, want to make a stand against Facebook collaborating with data harvesters for nefarious schemes, perfect, but Twitter, Linkedin, SnapChat etc aren’t really that much better when it comes to your data. Whatever you decide to do, you need to look at what your social media strategy is and how removing Facebook will affect you.