Getting rid of Facebook activity

While many of us have gone dark on their own Facebook pages - me included - I still use Facebook messenger and have a bit of activity on a couple of closed, member-only groups.

But I was not sure how many of you knew that you could delete all your old likes, comments, tags and posts out of Facebook, so I thought I would do a quick post to explain how to do it.

Log in to your Facebook account, copy the URL below, and simply replace the 'your username' element of the URL with your Facebook user name, and you will be taken to a page which contains all your activity.

https://www.facebook.com/your_username/allactivity?privacy_source=activity_log_top_menu&entry_point=www_top_menu_button

Your activity includes likes, comments, replies, and posts. Now simply click on the edit icon on the right-hand side of each post, and click "unlike", delete or remove reaction. Done.

I only keep the current month of my group data live, and delete everything older. Start deleting activity from your most recent date and work backwards, otherwise you end up with comments or likes that can't be deleted because you have deleted the base post first before all the resulting activity (I also go in and delink any posts that I have been tagged in. I don't want to even leave a private group footprint).

Please note that these are not Messenger posts that I am deleting, only Facebook activity. However, I am now starting to think about deleting Messenger entries as well, but I am just not yet quite sure as yet. More thinking needed!

Why do I do it? Well, I don't like the idea that Facebook has my data. So I clean it out. Then if anything turns up that the Facebook machine shouldn't know, I can say "I deleted that" and "you have my data illegally".

Probably they will have a get-out of jail free card through their extortionate EULA (end user licencing agreement), but hey. It's worth a crack for some self-protection.

The act of deleting might be my get out of jail free card instead.


Sam