Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world, with over 2.9 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2022. When users sign up for Facebook, they agree to share certain personal information with the company. This raises an important question – who actually owns and controls this data?
What data does Facebook collect?
When you create a Facebook account, you provide basic personal information such as your name, email address, gender, and date of birth. Beyond that, Facebook collects a wide range of additional data about you:
- Posts, photos, videos, and other content you upload
- Your friends/connections on the platform
- Pages and groups you follow or interact with
- Your interests and hobbies, based on how you interact with content
- Your physical location, via check-ins or GPS data
- Device information like operating system and browser details
As you use Facebook, it continues building a digital profile of you based on everything you do. This includes your clicks, views, searches, and more. Facebook’s tracking extends beyond its main platform too, following you around the web via its tracking Pixel and social plugins.
How does Facebook use your data?
Facebook leverages your personal data in a few key ways:
- To personalize your News Feed and recommend relevant content
- To enable targeted advertising based on your interests and behavior
- To improve its products and services overall
- To conduct research and surveys about usage of its platforms
Advertising is the core way Facebook monetizes its massive user base. Marketers pay Facebook to show ads to specific demographics and types of users. Your data helps determine which ads you see.
Does Facebook sell your data?
Facebook does not directly sell your personal data to third party companies or advertisers. However, it does allow advertisers to target segments of users based on information like location, age, gender and interests. Advertisers never gain direct access to your personal data.
Over the years, Facebook has shared certain data with other technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify, Netflix and many others. In most cases this was to integrate their products and services with Facebook. However, Facebook claimed to have ended many of these partnerships in recent years over data privacy concerns.
Who owns your Facebook data?
When you create a Facebook account and agree to its Terms of Service, you grant the company permission to use and share your personal data. This gives Facebook joint ownership over your data, along with you.
Facebook’s Terms state: “You own the content you create and share on Facebook and the other Facebook Products you use, and nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content. You are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want.”
However, the Terms also grant Facebook a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works” based on your content and data.
This essentially gives Facebook free reign to use any data you upload for its own business purposes. But you still technically retain ownership rights and can download a copy of your data if you request it.
Can you request for Facebook to delete your data?
Yes, Facebook allows you to request deletion of all or part of your data from its systems. This includes:
- Posts, photos, videos and other content you’ve shared
- Reactions you’ve made to posts
- Your account information and profile data
- News Feed preferences and customizations
- Other activity and interaction data
However, Facebook notes deleted data may persist in backup copies for up to 90 days. Some data like messages sent to friends cannot be deleted. And advertisers may retain info you’ve provided them for separate business purposes.
Does deleting Facebook remove all your data?
Deleting your Facebook account does begin to remove things you’ve posted, such as photos and updates. However, some data may remain in Facebook’s systems for the following reasons:
- Backup copies are kept for up to 90 days before permanent deletion
- Data shared with advertisers or third party apps may persist with those services
- Sponsored content you’ve engaged with may stay in Facebook’s analytics systems
- Messages you sent to friends remain visible to recipients
In addition, if other people have shared photos or posts that involve you, Facebook won’t remove that content when you delete your account.
Ways you can take control of your Facebook data
Although Facebook places limits on data removal, there are steps you can take to gain more control:
- Adjust your privacy settings to limit sharing with third party apps
- Be selective in what personal info you add to your profile
- Remove tags from posts others have tagged you in
- Delete old posts/photos/videos you no longer want public
- Block apps and websites from accessing your data
- Download a copy of your data to store it independently from Facebook
Can you permanently and completely delete Facebook data?
There is no way to permanently and completely delete all of your data from Facebook’s systems. As noted above, they maintain backup copies that can persist for months. Advertisers also compile their own databases with info you share.
That said, deleting your account and requesting data removal does go a long way towards limiting Facebook’s ability to use and share your information. Over time, it will decay and disappear from their active databases. But fragments likely persist in backups and partner systems.
Conclusion
In summary, when you agree to Facebook’s Terms of Service, you grant the company broad rights to use, share, and leverage your personal data. However, you retain ownership and can request removal of some data directly from Facebook. While not perfect, periodic data removal and limiting third party sharing are good privacy practices on the platform. But no social media service enables users to permanently and irreversibly delete their past activities.