Divesting from Meta, best practices

[jwi]

I have started the process to divest from Meta products and I am wondering if someone has insights to best practices.

Instagram​

For instagram this appears fairly simple, I will download my content as a file in JSON format. This file can be uploaded to pixelfed.

I will probably have to spend some time writing a python script to extract the photos, locations, etc and store the photos on some photo-data base software. I was hoping someone already wrote this script, but I could not find any app or script online. Bah. Not too important.

I will then delete my instagram account. I judge that there is no big risk that someone will create a new user under my name, impersonate me and use this for scams.

Facebook​

More tricky. I have had a "high output" account for a long time. I suspect that my content runs in the 100 GB range. Still manageable to download over time I guess.

I am not aware of another social media platform with similar structure, so I plan to download the data in HTML format, which can be display with a normal browser the next 10 years or so before current HTML will become obsolete (guess based on experience).

I would like to delete my fb account but judge that there is a near 100% chance that my profile will be cloned and used by scammers. Is there a way to keep a fb account without being cross tracked accross multiple sites? If I am logged out and does not use FB scripts on Websites (likes, comments etc) Meta should not be able to track me and resell profiling info? However, I assume that they keep whatever data they have collected on me forever, unless I ask them very specifically to remove this, in which case I assume that there is no chance I can keep an empty account place-holder to stop scammers from stealing my identity. Hm... tricky eh.

Anyway, if there is someone else who has thought about this things, or have actual knowledge, I'd be most pleased to hear your thoughts.

 

[remus]

Wth Facebook is there any reason not to use their gdpr export tools? They're obliged to give you a copy of all your data in a useable format so at their scale I imagine they'll have a well developed tool for doing this.

Personally I would just delete your account. It is already possible for someone to clone your account (same name, same profile pic etc.) so the risk doesn't feel much higher than what you're currently living with.

 

[jwi]

Wth Facebook is there any reason not to use their gdpr export tools? They're obliged to give you a copy of all your data in a useable format so at their scale I imagine they'll have a well developed tool for doing this.

Personally I would just delete your account. It is already possible for someone to clone your account (same name, same profile pic etc.) so the risk doesn't feel much higher than what you're currently living with.

Yes, it is possible to get the data as JSON or HTML. The JSON for instagram is well formed and useful. Working on it now.

I assume that facebook and instagram is less profitable than messenger and WhatsApp, and would also like to stop using those, but not using WhatsApp in Spain is like not having a phone. I am not sure it can even be done

 

[willr]

I don't know if the FB like buttons track you when you're logged out.

In any case I keep stopping short of deleting my FB account, but as an attempt to minimise what meta collects on me I use Firefox's Facebook container: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/
I also don't use it on my phone, and tend to log out when using it on a pc.