In theory, deleting your account removes all Facebook data related to you. In reality it's more complicated, taking about 90 days.
Allegations of complicity with National Security Agency surveillance and multiple data-privacy breaches suggest that your data may never truly be deleted.
You can still cleanse your Facebook presence for everyone else,
Delete any sensitive content that you have posted.
Contact friends about content that you would like deleted.
Leaving social data behind
As hard as you try, some personally identifiable information may remain. This could be something as simple as your name on a message, unless you're Mark Zuckerberg.
You have little control over this or what others share about you in future. The most you can realistically do is ask your friends to respect your privacy.
Data shared with apps and advertisers is with them forever. As a Facebook user you are leaving behind a valuable personal data footprint.
What to do next?
Facebook can track non-users via the ‘like’ button and other similar means. You can minimise this and protect your privacy.
Switch to a privacy focused browser like Brave or try a tracking blocker in your favourite.
Facebook was founded in 2004. Their leadership has had well over a decade to learn from their privacy blunders. They have consistently failed to reign in their greed.
‘Demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists … is like asking … a giraffe to shorten its neck, or a cow to give up chewing. These demands are existential threats that violate the basic mechanisms of the entity's survival.’ - Shoshana Zuboff.
Whatever your opinion on Facebook's policies, the company's choices impact society worldwide.
Free speech is not the same as paid speech.
Paid political ads and similar topics need immediate discussion and regulation. These systems are broken and open to abuse by malicious actors with sufficient funds.
All power corrupts;
Facebook continues to dominate. It's important to consider their future.
‘And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ - Sir John Dalberg-Acton.
Web/app developers
If you produce content on the web, you can make a massive difference.