πŸ“’ Actions Speak Louder Than Words!

Delete / purge data from 3rd party social media periodically

Posted: Aug 25, 2021 | Reading time: 5 min
⚠️ Warning: This post is over a year old, the information may be out of date.
πŸ“’ I’ve moved to a new website. Please visit me at https://journal.robbi.my !
post

Have you ever thought about deleting your old content? Especially on centralize social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and many more.. which we are well aware that they will track, analyze and use your metadata and content for a certain purpose that only benefit for them self.

Social network is not likely same as when you start register on they website. This is what you should expect anyway. They put you on free trial mode and let you lurk around and catch you connection, likes, post and more. After a certain period, you won’t notice they does not care much about us connecting with friends, it just want us to consume content as much as possible on their platform - while generating ad revenue. No matter what social media you use, they want you to be addict to they social network.

Lucky enough, now we have decentralize / interconnected social media (Fediverse) such as Mastodon, PixelFed, Diaspora, Friendica and more as alternative, but if you using third party host.. I still suggesting you to purge your content on a certain threshold.

On certain cases, even you are self hosting your own content maybe you can consider to purge it too from your instance once a while…

In my own cases, I don’t host any service because I hate to manage it. So I just use some 3rd party services. For now I have Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, PixelFed, Instagram and this blog.

I have think deeply about this matter and I have decide to purge my content on Twitter and Mastodon on a certain period (I use a tool called Forget), I still couldn’t find a better way to automate removing my Facebook content, it will be hassle to delete it manually. I still keep my content on instagram because I rarely use it. For blog, it much easier because I use SSG (Static Site Generator) which means, I have full control of the source code and I uploaded my compiled architecture on Gitlab pages, I can just modify it anytime and set some articles as unpublished and re-upload my content, plus I can move out easily to another host or self host in future. It likely a semi-permanent and as I told on disclaimer, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time.

The reason why I doing this is I don’t like being a product on they (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) services. Living in Malaysia, it quite harder to just delete Facebook and Twitter because Government likely manipulate news on television, radio and newspaper. So internet is best way to read some updates (but sadly, there is tonnes of fakenews and spam content too). Other then that, I don’t want my sarcasm text, curse word are leave behind when I gone forever. I don’t want my next generation saw any bad side of myself. Sometimes I can’t control what I like, retweet, post and comment… Another last thing are about perception, for example I maybe be like or communicate with some people publicly on social media and somehow after few years, he/she become p*rnstar, terrorist, wanted hacker or what so ever that people may use your data and manipulate it for blackmail, attacking, cyberbully you or your family.

Simply said, with just 1 stupid screenshot it can destroy you and your family career and future. So this kind of incident maybe happen on any platform, it is they best to purge it from time to time. Agree with me?

To be honest, it kinda hypocrite, suck and awkward if you are using social network but not posting and interact anything. It avoidable.. but yes, I know there is someone joined social media just to scroll up-down and watch the timeline, congratulation if you can be like this (hey, my wife are like this too), bot someone may tagged you or something and this metadata still can be use for something like facial recognition and more. Too bad huh? Well.. the best way is to use pseudonyms but maybe you will be banned or we (who are friends on IRL) won’t recognize you. Argg.. damm the pit hole of social network. It trap us on every side..

The best way is to do routine purging you content from time to time.. or just requesting data, requesting for data to be delete, remove your account then register new profile.. I did this on Facebook because they don’t have a proper way to allow me deleting my own content, it limit me around 25 post deletion per day..WTF! I think I have 4-6k of status to be remove..I am so naive back then, I posted and share around 3-5 post average per day. Hurmm..

Dear reader, it not too late to control you data, as long you are still alive. It kinda mixed up feeling but in simple word.. what every social media you use, do purge it from time to time. It nothing much to throwback, just saved that picture, video or quote on you computer. No one care so much about it… but big cooperation are love about big data and the raw data is from you and you won’t get a single cent of profit that they make…

Edit

Have some thoughts, discussion or feedback on this post?
IndieWeb Interactions

Below you can find the interactions that this page has had using Indieweb. Which means, you can mentioned this URL on any website that support WebMention. Have you written a response to this post? Let me know the URL:

((Do you use a website that do not set up with WebMention capabilities? You can use Comment Parade.)


Mentions, bookmarks, likes and repost