Deleting Facebook permanently

My FB was becoming a ghost town 5 years ago, so I stopped using it, then deleted my "real" profile. I maintain a shell account now for Marketplace, Groups, and Messenger. I have the "light" apps on my phone with all requested permissions denied.

Marketplace SUCKS from a usability perspective, but it's become equally as active than CL in my area.

Groups are a goldmine of information - my neighborhood has one that is active, I have an active one for my model vehicle, and there are B/S/T groups that are nice, as well. Groups have effectively killed the old Forums/Bulletin Boards.

Messenger is required if you want to buy/sell, etc. I don't use it for anything useful.

However, today due to everyone moving to Facebook and other content silos with a mobile app, independent website forums are severely hollowing out. On some of the forums about various hobbies that I follow, the most active posters left are often extremely curmudgeonly elderly people, and if they hail from very polarized countries they are quick to descend into political rants to the point that they do little on-topic posting. Facebook isn’t a satisfying place for friendship due to the feeds and algorithms, and independent forums can now be high-stress environments. Consequently, the internet feels like a more lonely place than before.

FB main platform I'll use for events and, most importantly, Groups. I have been overall quite impressed with the communities in the FB Groups (of course some are better than others).

For example I've been a huge fan of the Streets of Rage series; SOR4 came out last year, 25 years after the previous release. The Streets of Rage 4 facebook group has been an absolute godsend. Very active community, tons of expert players posting videos, very easy to find people to play with, funny memes, the works. The SOR4 discord is hit and miss and reddit is too much of a message board and isn't so active. FB Group is light years ahead of any other community for this game that I've found.

I've also joined groups for The Office, Futurama, etc (all of have dozens of different groups, each tailored slightly differently). I laugh at anyone who says all they see on their feed is people posting bullshit, vitriol, and misinformation. That is a YOU problem, not a FB problem. My feed is filled with relevant updates from friends, as well as a constant stream of The Office/Futurama/Streets of Rage 4. Exactly how I want it.

Twitter, on the other hand, is both compelling and threatening. It draws me in and sucks up far too much of my time. And when I've waded into controversial waters I've been met with hordes of strangers calling me names, making fun of my appearance, and even in one case emailing my employer in an effort to materially harm me for disagreeing on the internet.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me on Facebook.

Between Facebook and Twitter I find the latter both far more threatening and, because it's also actually compelling, far more difficult to leave.

Facebook is a zero by comparison.