Was recently reminded by my friend @teeg of just how much info Facebook collects to track you, and I want to share how to make that harder for them with the rest of you.
If you still have facebook/can't get rid of it (for any reason- we're not here to judge today) then you're going to want to clear your off-Meta activity.
You read that right, Meta tracks what you do off it's apps as well. It tracks other apps and websites that you use- whether you connected them to Facebook or not, AND places you visit IRL and when you visited. This includes not just stores and other businesses, but also allegedly includes hotels, schools and hospital/doctors offices. (I'm unfortunately unable to confirm the last three for myself as I didn't look closely at mine before deleting- and it's been years since I've graduated or stayed at a hotel, and months since I've been to a doctor. If anyone cares to confirm in the notes I'll update this post.)
This post will show you how to clear your off-Meta activity. (You'll also want to toggle off Ads data permissions, but I'll make another post about that later.)
First, go to your Profile Icon, then to Settings and Privacy to get to your Settings.
Once in Settings you're going to click See more in Accounts Center. On desktop it should be in a box on the upper-left of the page.
Once in Accounts Center you're going to click Your information and permissions, then Your activity off Meta technologies at the bottom of that window.
Once in the Your activity off Meta technologies window you're going to notice at the bottom three buttons, Disconnect specific activity, Clear previous activity, and Manage future activity.
You're going to want to first clear your previous activity and disconnect future activity. This will also automatically clear any activity that would be under the Disconnect specific activity tab, as it's just for picking and choosing what activity to delete.
An added benefit to this is that it will also clear out some of the data Meta uses for its AI programs- not all, but hey- that's something.
Also, even if you can't delete your Facebook account, I urge you to please delete/uninstall the app from your phone as that's the #1 best way to keep it from tracking you everywhere you go IRL and online. That said, if you delete no other Meta app from your phone- make sure to delete FB messenger- it's literally the worst one, but that's another post, which I'll hopefully get to after the FB ads one I promised above.
Stay safe out there, and remember- fuck Facebook.