Facebook, the current owner of both Instagram and WhatsApp recently pushed for some new Terms and Conditions, pretty much allowing your data to be shared between all 3 platforms.
Some articles better explaining:
WhatsApp Makes Data Sharing with Facebook Mandatory. As of January 15th, they have pushed the WhatsApp changes back for 3 months.
From this article: The driving factor behind this seems to be that US government wants to break down Facebook into 3 separate independent companies, and Facebook is trying to join them all as a single entity making it impossible to break apart.
Get Backup of your data:
Even though you do not want to be part of that platform, some of the stuff you have posted you may want to keep. For example the pictures you took. Luckily under recent laws companies have to allow you to download all the information they have stored for your profile. I did this
WhatsApp:
- Go to Settings -> Account -> Request account info
- Within a few days you will be able do download a zip file with the info (from the Application directly)
The results is an html file with a list of group names and phone numbers you have talked to before. I did some cleanup from WhatsApp on the dead groups, and got rid of a bunch of groups.
Instagram:
- Go to Settings -> Security -> Download Data
- Within a few days you will get an email with the link the the data
The result is a zip file with all the pictures, videos and stories that you posted, organized in folders by the year and month. They also have json files for comments, likes, and messages you have sent. I kept a backup of the pictures, but got rid of all the json files.
Facebook:
- Settings & Privacy -> Privacy Shortcuts -> Your Facebook Information -> Access your information -> (click on the link to download your information)
- I selected all data in HTML5, with High Media Quality
As soon as I requested I got an an email confirming it:
Thanks for requesting a copy of your Facebook information. Once we've finished creating your file, we'll send you another email letting you know it's complete and ready to be downloaded. For security reasons, your file will be available to download for only a few days after you receive an email from us, so please monitor your email for our message. If your file is no longer available by the time you read your email, you can visit the Download Your Information page to create a new file. |
| The file was ready in 12 minutes, it was 1 GB in size. |
Reasons to keep:
At the time of writing this I have all 3. Here are some personal reasons why I should and should not keep these accounts.
Facebook:
Over the years, I have removed facebook from my phone (only access via web browser) have deactivated all notifications that are not friends actions directly aimed at me (for example invites to events, or direct messages) and will only sign if there is a +1 notification on my profile.
This was not a simple since, thought this experience facebook kept adding more and more notifications aimed to bring you back in, such as this friend has posted something for the first time in a while...
Reasons to keep:
- Friends create some events for birthday parties
- Easy way to organize events
- Sometime I care about birthday
- Can reconnect with people from past
Reasons to get rid of:
- Do not allow me to post links to my person blog:
"This URL goes against our Community Standards on spam:" - Personal data that can be hacked (anything on internet can be hacked, and facebook is no different). They naturally do want to protect your data more than other companies, but they also have a big target as they have so much information on you.
- In my opinion immoral how they track you. Article from Wired. The biggest concern I had was the Off Facebook activity tracked: another article from wired
- From RT: Slipper slope on who they can ban who they cannot, how do they decided who they can and cannot sensor
Instagram:
Reasons to keep:
- quick and easy way to see what friends are doing and where they are
Reasons to get rid of:
- Time wasting: easy to go down the rabbit hole and wast time watching random pictures / videos from people you do not know
- fake feeling you are keeping in touch with friends
- tons of ads (2 ads + 1 suggestion for friends slid in 8 stories from friends I am seeing)
- easy to eat up your phone data
Whatsapp:
Reasons to keep:
- The go to platform to talk to friends
- no ads
- works with people in any country
- lots of business internationally have accounts, so easy to communicate without paying for roaming charges
Reasons to get rid of:
- part of facebook platform, they have your information
Final Decision:
Facebook: DELETED
- Gave a notice to friends that I will be leaving the platform and asked those who want to remain in touch with me to private message me.
- Download all the data.
- Deleted all all the albums of pictures
- I had Spotify previously linked to facebook, I reset the password on Spotify (with my email) and was able to safely remove it
- Second download was 228 MB
- DELETED
Instagram: DELETED
- Gave a notice to friends that I will be leaving the platform and asked those who want to remain in touch with me to private message me.
- Gave a notice to friends that I will be leaving the platform and asked those who want to remain in touch with me to private message me.
- Got the backup of my pictures (see how to do so above)
- Changed my display picture
- changed my password to a random id
- Deleted all my pictures from instagram
- got another backup to ensure they do not have anything left on me (they had my stories and my messages, but I was too lazy to manually delete these)
WhatsApp: Decided to keep it, since it is hard to force all friends to a different platform, and I find it more useful than simple texting (especially for groups). But I am trying to use Signal more.
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