I am currently involved in a number of efforts to sustain civilization that, for better or worse, are organized via Facebook. If I were to delete my facebook account now, it would stop my daily efforts, which are not inconsiderable, to move forward towards a fossil fuel free world, and to push the Republican Party off the edge of the planet. So I will not be doing this. Also, if you are an activist working in the areas I’m working, and you delete your account, I doubt I’ll be able to spend the effort compensating for your decision, nor will others, so keep that in mind.

But, with that disclaimer, I can see why people would want to do it. And, I will likely do it myself once I’ve migrated over to the alternative system.

Meanwhile, if you want to delete your Facebook account, read this over, and also read over the material in the link at the bottom, and plan it out.

First, back it up, downloading the contents, if you want. Facebook provides instructions here. Essentially, you go to the upside down pyramid triangle thingie in the upper right part of your page, go to Settings, then click “Download a copy of your Facebook data” and then “Start my Archive”

No, you cant decide to download a subset. All or nothing.

Then, to delete your Facebook account:

Go to the down arrow thingie again (upper right) and Settings.

Go to General Account Settings then to the category Apps.

On the App Settings page, “show all” the apps. There will be a lot of them.

Move your mouse over each app and use the X to remove them. Now, all those third party apps will not get messed up when they try to interact with you, or you with them, via Facebook.

Then, go to THIS LINK.

Then hit the kill switch, Delete My Account

You will be asked to supply your password, and possibly pass a capcha challenge.

There are some alternative routes you can take do to this. A good summary can be found here.