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Does doing this also delete Messenger? I'm aware there's been a little bit of decoupling of the two services in recent times.

Bajeezus 9y ago
Deactivating your account does nothing to Messenger, not sure about deleting.
ktta 9y ago
Yes, unfortunately.
- crowbahr 9y ago
  If you're deleting Facebook and not getting rid of messenger you're missing the point. Messenger is more invasive in many ways, even if it doesn't track your web activity as much.
  - ktta 9y ago
    Invasiveness of Messenger is much more bearable because it lets me communicate with my Facebook friends, which I see as much more important benefit compared to a time sink newsfeed. Also, using Messenger Lite (Android only) is a vastly better experience than the main Messenger app.
    - swebs 9y ago
      SlimSocial also supports Messenger and is a good alternative to the Facebook app in general. You still have the same privacy issues regarding data on Facebook's servers, but at least this app lacks the client-side analytics.
    - deevolution 9y ago
      I also use messenger to communicate with friends, but i think im going to make the effort to convince them to move to a privacy focused and non data mining platform, such as telegram.
    - fenwick67 9y ago
      Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just use sms?
      - alphydan 9y ago
        The thing you are missing is that many of us have friends all over the world. And international SMS quickly gets expensive. (Also, most people are not on signal / your-favorite-messaging-app) ...
      - s0rce 9y ago
        My friends use messenger and getting them to change is hard, not sure why they migrated to it in the first place...
      - reitanqild 9y ago
        Group chat doesn't exist in sms. Also it is quite old fashioned and painfully limited wrt/attachments. And expensive for thise with families/friends abroad.
      - steaknsteak 9y ago
        People make group chats in FB messenger. If you don't have messenger, you don't get to be in the group chat.
      - mschuster91 9y ago
        Because SMS only supports text, but not any form of multimedia. Granted you can use MMS but that's really expensive and only does photo and video. Also, SMS has no encryption or sender authentication, not even any way to prevent MITM sniffing or spoofing (which is why online banking SMS verification is unsafe as hell).
        chappi42 9y ago
        Try threema. They have multimedia, everything is encrypted and group chat works well. - Not open source, it cost a little, but I trust them.
      - ktta 9y ago
    - lukeschlather 9y ago
      It's funny, because for me the primary benefit of Facebook is events. Keeping track of events with calendar invites is much more clunky and higher friction. Messenger is just walled-garden email and I could live without it, but I have no idea how to do community events as well as I can with Facebook. And it's funny because contrary to the "Facebook as hypnotist" narrative (which is real) Facebook is a really fantastic tool for getting people together talking face to face and even working together on things.
      - Spooky23 9y ago
        My kids school uses signup genius. There are a few solutions
      - josephv 9y ago
        FB is evil because it can be loosely coupled with trump, not because of any merit. We all knew this data was collected and out there. You do you, everyone on the internet is actively trading privacy for functionality. Don't stop using a service that benefits you because the current news and/or political cycle is hyping an issue. Don't want to be preachy, but if you've found something that works for you, forget all these haters, this is all manufactured by someone that shorted FB, I promise.
      - Jemmeh 9y ago
        It just depends on what you use it for. A lot of my friends have cheap phone plans with low network minutes/texts but unlimited wifi. Facebook Messenger becomes a cheap phone in this case. There's alternatives, but I'd have to convince everyone I know to swap to them...not gonna happen. Meetup.com maybe? But I agree, I use Facebook Events a lot. It comes back to that issue of "everyone is here and using it, so this is where events are posted".
      - Karrot_Kream 9y ago
        Until you realize that FB has no API to get events out of FB. FB might be useful but it's the same usefulness as having an email thread with a calendar invite. They don't let you export your event data in any meaningful way to keep you on the platform.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    If I have messenger (edit: Messenger Lite) on my phone, is it tracking my location the same as the facebook app would? I usually have location services turned off but I don't imagine that makes much difference. (I bet that's a stupid question)
    - MoBattah 9y ago
      Not a stupid question. I also don't know if turning off location services actually disables the ability of apps to get your location.
      - crowbahr 9y ago
        It does not. It's essentially preventing them from getting granular or "fine" location. They can still get basic telemetry as I recall.
marvin 9y ago
...and does it actually delete your data from Facebook's servers? I.e. all their records of your messaging history, all your photos, their ability to make a future third party face-recognize you on the street, their knowledge of who you find attractive, what party you are likely to vote for, what crimes you are likely to commit, what you like to spend money on and so on and so forth?
- ellisv 9y ago
  I don't think so. I've kept my account primarily because I assume they'd have a shadow account on me. Just because you don't have a FB account doesn't mean they don't have data on you.
- ttul 9y ago
  Yes I believe so, although they say it may take a while for various batch processes to get rid of all traces - for instance tape backup.
- mercer 9y ago
  I've kept an account partly for that reason. I'm wondering how much GDPR might change that though. Can anyone with more expertise on the matter weigh in? Assuming I could be relatively certain that my data will be deleted, I'd probably keep a bare account but delete most of what they have.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewprock 9y ago
  I would expect that much of your data would remain, though specific portions would be anonymized. I would guess that photos, the contents of posts, etc. would vanish (eventually), but the account id and metadata, connections to other accounts, events, and the like, would remain in perpetuity.
potench 9y ago
What happens to your Spotify account if you delete/deactivate your facebook account? I made the mistake of linking the 2 when I first joined Spotify in my haste to listen to music.
- crftr 9y ago
  https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Tutorial-How-to-Disconnect-Spotify-from-Facebook/td-p/247266 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Tutorial-How-to-Di... You will need to contact Spotify support if you deactivated Facebook prior to disconnecting from Spotify.
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  Looking through my email archives, I see I had to contact Spotify support via email and ask them to delete the Spotify account I'd created via FB, so that I could signup again via an email login. However! Spotify support were great, they offered to migrate all my playlists from the old account over to the new account. No guarantees they could do that now with everyone deleting their FB accounts at once, but I was really impressed with the friendliness of their service. They pretty much created a customer for life out of me from that support experience.
- arianvanp 9y ago
  You will need to call Spotify. I was not able to cancel my Spotify subscription anymore after I deleted Facebook. So I had to call and they had to manually transfer all my playlists to a new account
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  You're not the only one - for years Spotify ONLY let you sign in with Facebook. And you aren't allowed to unlink them either. I had to just start a new Spotify account and Los everything.

Bajeezus 9y ago

Deactivating your account does nothing to Messenger, not sure about deleting.

ktta 9y ago

Yes, unfortunately.

crowbahr 9y ago
If you're deleting Facebook and not getting rid of messenger you're missing the point. Messenger is more invasive in many ways, even if it doesn't track your web activity as much.
- ktta 9y ago
  Invasiveness of Messenger is much more bearable because it lets me communicate with my Facebook friends, which I see as much more important benefit compared to a time sink newsfeed. Also, using Messenger Lite (Android only) is a vastly better experience than the main Messenger app.
  - swebs 9y ago
    SlimSocial also supports Messenger and is a good alternative to the Facebook app in general. You still have the same privacy issues regarding data on Facebook's servers, but at least this app lacks the client-side analytics.
  - deevolution 9y ago
    I also use messenger to communicate with friends, but i think im going to make the effort to convince them to move to a privacy focused and non data mining platform, such as telegram.
  - fenwick67 9y ago
    Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just use sms?
    - alphydan 9y ago
      The thing you are missing is that many of us have friends all over the world. And international SMS quickly gets expensive. (Also, most people are not on signal / your-favorite-messaging-app) ...
    - s0rce 9y ago
      My friends use messenger and getting them to change is hard, not sure why they migrated to it in the first place...
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      Group chat doesn't exist in sms. Also it is quite old fashioned and painfully limited wrt/attachments. And expensive for thise with families/friends abroad.
    - steaknsteak 9y ago
      People make group chats in FB messenger. If you don't have messenger, you don't get to be in the group chat.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      Because SMS only supports text, but not any form of multimedia. Granted you can use MMS but that's really expensive and only does photo and video. Also, SMS has no encryption or sender authentication, not even any way to prevent MITM sniffing or spoofing (which is why online banking SMS verification is unsafe as hell).
      - chappi42 9y ago
        Try threema. They have multimedia, everything is encrypted and group chat works well. - Not open source, it cost a little, but I trust them.
    - ktta 9y ago
  - lukeschlather 9y ago
    It's funny, because for me the primary benefit of Facebook is events. Keeping track of events with calendar invites is much more clunky and higher friction. Messenger is just walled-garden email and I could live without it, but I have no idea how to do community events as well as I can with Facebook. And it's funny because contrary to the "Facebook as hypnotist" narrative (which is real) Facebook is a really fantastic tool for getting people together talking face to face and even working together on things.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      My kids school uses signup genius. There are a few solutions
    - josephv 9y ago
      FB is evil because it can be loosely coupled with trump, not because of any merit. We all knew this data was collected and out there. You do you, everyone on the internet is actively trading privacy for functionality. Don't stop using a service that benefits you because the current news and/or political cycle is hyping an issue. Don't want to be preachy, but if you've found something that works for you, forget all these haters, this is all manufactured by someone that shorted FB, I promise.
    - Jemmeh 9y ago
      It just depends on what you use it for. A lot of my friends have cheap phone plans with low network minutes/texts but unlimited wifi. Facebook Messenger becomes a cheap phone in this case. There's alternatives, but I'd have to convince everyone I know to swap to them...not gonna happen. Meetup.com maybe? But I agree, I use Facebook Events a lot. It comes back to that issue of "everyone is here and using it, so this is where events are posted".
    - Karrot_Kream 9y ago
      Until you realize that FB has no API to get events out of FB. FB might be useful but it's the same usefulness as having an email thread with a calendar invite. They don't let you export your event data in any meaningful way to keep you on the platform.
- mistermann 9y ago
  If I have messenger (edit: Messenger Lite) on my phone, is it tracking my location the same as the facebook app would? I usually have location services turned off but I don't imagine that makes much difference. (I bet that's a stupid question)
  - MoBattah 9y ago
    Not a stupid question. I also don't know if turning off location services actually disables the ability of apps to get your location.
    - crowbahr 9y ago
      It does not. It's essentially preventing them from getting granular or "fine" location. They can still get basic telemetry as I recall.

marvin 9y ago

...and does it actually delete your data from Facebook's servers? I.e. all their records of your messaging history, all your photos, their ability to make a future third party face-recognize you on the street, their knowledge of who you find attractive, what party you are likely to vote for, what crimes you are likely to commit, what you like to spend money on and so on and so forth?

ellisv 9y ago
I don't think so. I've kept my account primarily because I assume they'd have a shadow account on me. Just because you don't have a FB account doesn't mean they don't have data on you.
ttul 9y ago
Yes I believe so, although they say it may take a while for various batch processes to get rid of all traces - for instance tape backup.
mercer 9y ago
I've kept an account partly for that reason. I'm wondering how much GDPR might change that though. Can anyone with more expertise on the matter weigh in? Assuming I could be relatively certain that my data will be deleted, I'd probably keep a bare account but delete most of what they have.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
andrewprock 9y ago
I would expect that much of your data would remain, though specific portions would be anonymized. I would guess that photos, the contents of posts, etc. would vanish (eventually), but the account id and metadata, connections to other accounts, events, and the like, would remain in perpetuity.

potench 9y ago

What happens to your Spotify account if you delete/deactivate your facebook account? I made the mistake of linking the 2 when I first joined Spotify in my haste to listen to music.

crftr 9y ago
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Tutorial-How-to-Disconnect-Spotify-from-Facebook/td-p/247266 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Tutorial-How-to-Di... You will need to contact Spotify support if you deactivated Facebook prior to disconnecting from Spotify.
SyneRyder 9y ago
Looking through my email archives, I see I had to contact Spotify support via email and ask them to delete the Spotify account I'd created via FB, so that I could signup again via an email login. However! Spotify support were great, they offered to migrate all my playlists from the old account over to the new account. No guarantees they could do that now with everyone deleting their FB accounts at once, but I was really impressed with the friendliness of their service. They pretty much created a customer for life out of me from that support experience.
arianvanp 9y ago
You will need to call Spotify. I was not able to cancel my Spotify subscription anymore after I deleted Facebook. So I had to call and they had to manually transfer all my playlists to a new account
ClassyJacket 9y ago
You're not the only one - for years Spotify ONLY let you sign in with Facebook. And you aren't allowed to unlink them either. I had to just start a new Spotify account and Los everything.