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DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

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Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#11

Post by ilikehurdles »

SteveNuts wrote: post #3

What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data? I'm sure this is simply marking it as hidden in their database. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but to me the only way to take back something you say on social media, is to never have posted it in the first place.

> What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data?

Close to 0%. There is no way they're actually deleting things on the backend, but this could help prevent your content from indexed by search engines inside and outside of facebook.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#12

Post by slig »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

I don't trust the "delete" button to scrub it from FB's database. I'd be slightly more confident ( slightly ) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated, however. In which case, I think the more effective script would be one that goes through all of your FB posts and scrambles them, or replaces the text with gibberish.

> I'd be slightly more confident (slightly) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated, however.

Don't be confident. They have [1], or used to, post edit history. Even if the feature isn't there in the UI, I bet they didn't remove it internally.

[1]: DDG: facebook post edit history.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#13

Post by llamataboot »

ivansavz wrote: post #4

This is beautiful: succinct and powerful. Back in the day there was a similar js bookmarklet that could be used to export all your friends' contacts (name + emails) so you can leave without worrying that you'll be missing out on all your "connections." It would be nice to extend this with a "backup my posts + contacts" info before deleting everything.

I was just thinking the same thing.

Seems like it would be easy to pop the text (and even comments) into some sort of structured dataset for archiving's sake.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#14

Post by j-c-hewitt »

nostalgk wrote: post #5

Does anyone know if there is an equivalent to delete Facebook friends or unlike pages/leave groups? I really want to clean out my Facebook since I've had it for a very long time and much of it doesn't appeal to me anymore, but I don't necessarily want to lose the tiny social ecosystem I've created with my family. However, I would like to remove the hundreds of friends and pages that I don't talk to/don't represent me…

I am in the same boat. It should be a lot easier to scrub your FB with the default tools.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#15

Post by traek »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

I don't trust the "delete" button to scrub it from FB's database. I'd be slightly more confident ( slightly ) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated, however. In which case, I think the more effective script would be one that goes through all of your FB posts and scrambles them, or replaces the text with gibberish.

> I'd be slightly more confident (slightly) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated

I'd be much less confident, considering that they explicitly save and make public post's edit history.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#16

Post by nostalgk »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #14
nostalgk wrote: post #5

Does anyone know if there is an equivalent to delete Facebook friends or unlike pages/leave groups? I really want to clean out my Facebook since I've had it for a very long time and much of it doesn't appeal to me anymore, but I don't necessarily want to lose the tiny social ecosystem I've created with my family. However, I would like to remove the hundreds of friends and pages that I don't talk to/don't represent me…

I am in the same boat. It should be a lot easier to scrub your FB with the default tools.

Agreed. Currently, the only way seems to be to go to each page and click the button.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#18

Post by anaphor »

rashomon wrote: post #2

You need to add a requirement that you had Chromedriver installed. I had Chrome, homebrew and Python3 installed originally but without running: brew cask install chromedriver The script wouldn't work. Works great now!

Thanks! I just added a note to the README mentioning it. I'm not sure how I forgot it.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#20

Post by jyriand »

SteveNuts wrote: post #3

What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data? I'm sure this is simply marking it as hidden in their database. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but to me the only way to take back something you say on social media, is to never have posted it in the first place.

Last I remember it was supposed to be a good software engineering practice to never actually delete data from database but just mark it as deleted.
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