Getting my personal data out of Facebook
I left Facebook, and all I got was this lousy legalese.
In January 2019, I closed my Facebook account because it was no longer of any professional use to me. As a European citizen, the gdpr directive gives me the right to request the data Facebook has about me, and ask for its deletion.

Unsurprisingly living up to its reputation, Facebook refuses to comply with my gdpr Subject Access Requests in an appropriate manner. This page is tracking my communication with Facebook and their responses, with the aim of attracting attention to their unlawful practices and fixing the process for everyone. It provides interesting insights into the curious “legal” maneuvers by Facebook, and would at times even be funny—if only it wasn’t so sad.

On this page, you will find links to the full text to all emails sent by Facebook and by myself. There is quite some sarcasm and cynicism in my replies, which hopefully makes the dull legal stuff a tiny bit entertaining.

If you’re a Facebook user, you might like to know that Facebook considers you too stupid to understand your own data. If you’re a lawyer, you’re probably going to cringe at their very peculiar bending of European law.

Facebook’s strategy is dissuasion. They will purposely overload you with a lot of technical, legal, or other nonsense, with the aim of making you give up. They bet on you giving up. They will send you wrong, confusing, and conflicting information, and will reply as late as they think they can get away with, even outside of legal boundaries.

Getting my personal data out of Facebook I left Facebook, and all I got was this lousy legalese. In