I’m deleting my Facebook account, even though Facebook may keep all my data.
I’d like to know what will happen to my comments. Are they gonna hide them from the public?
I did when I left facebook.
Facebook will still store all your content but I heard a rumour they legally have to treat the content as if it was deleted ie. not allowed to sell or share it.
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Well it is common that companies keep “deleted” for archiving purposes. Legalities of that are doubtful but can be logicial. Usually the access would indeed be tight so your exposure would be limited. I however fail to see how it would help to first delete all comments before doing the account. I mean i don’t think it can harm but it might be a lot of effort for low gain.
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I have used Facebook since I was a child, this means that there are many comments that may not be appropriate or may contain personal information so I don’t want these comments to continue to appear to the public.
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Not much point they have cold storage backups, and the data has already been ingested into whatever ad DBs already exist.
Just delete it and be done with it, you’re never really deleting anything on facebook (just hiding it). Deletion really only makes sense if you want other users not to see it (not the platform itself).
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Besides deleting your account I would suggest to do a removal request under GDPR to Facebook. This might limit the access even further. Unfortunately deleting an account does not always equal what the company does under a removal request because this has other legal weight.
To do so use MydataDoneRight for easy template.
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I think you can remove all activity data in your “Activity manager” or whatever it’s called under your account settings. It lists every like, comment, whatever. You should be able to delete all of them in a few clicks.
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Are non-EU citizens/residents able to make GDPR requests?
Unfortunately I think GDPR removal requests are only available within the EU.
Update: I downloaded my Facebook data before deleting my account, and was surprised by how much information they had on me.
It took them 5 days to prepare my data.
And how does Facebook know you live where? Not suggesting you to do anything out of law. But you could just request it.
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Facebook (Meta) already knows where you live, unless you use a VPN and other methods to cover your location.
Based on my research, there is no official way in my region to submit a removal request to Facebook, so I assume it is the same for other regions.