Social Book Post Manager -- Guide & General Ranting

=============== ABOUT

This is a breakdown of the SOCIAL BOOK POST MANAGER Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae), explaining a bit about what it can do for you and how it works.  This extension is used to clean up Facebook posts, profile data, etc.

I personally found it much more useful and reliable than the far more widely-known Greasemonkey script for Firefox (https://www.itsupportguides.com/knowledge-base/facebook-articles/how-to-delete-all-facebook-profile-wall-posts/) that purports to do the same thing.  The latter doesn't give you much control at all, and was REALLY BAD at giving feedback in terms of progress and success.  It also made my Firefox slow to an absolute crawl, spawning near-continual performance warnings from the browser.  This Chrome extension was speedier, allowed me to control what I was deleting with rough date restrictions, and generally did the job well.

=============== HOW IT WORKS

Each time it's run, it allows you to specify the following parameters:

* YEAR/MONTH: You can only do single years/months at a time, OR everything at once.  You cannot specify date *ranges*, contiguous or otherwise.  For example, you can choose to everything from 2016, or everything from June of 2011, but you cannot choose to delete data from January-April 2018.  You would have to select January, February, March, and April of 2018 individually and run the extension each time (four times) to cover that date range without touching anything else.

* TEXT CONTAINS/TEXT NOT CONTAINS: You can choose to restrict the extension to posts that include or exclude certain text strings.  I didn't use these fields so I've no idea how well they work.  This may be a way to get around the date range restriction mentioned above.

* PRESCAN ON PAGE: If you want to double check what's going to be deleted before it's actually deleted, leave this ticked (it's on by default).  It will scan your timeline and ask for confirmation before deletion.  If on the other hand, like me, you've already gone through all your posts and just want shit gone, untick it.  Things will go much, much faster.

* SPEED: The extension runs at 4x by default.  It goes up to 16x, and as low as 0.25x.  I did not notice an appreciable difference in accuracy (success in deleting/hiding things) between the different speeds, despite the fact that it suggests you choose a slower one if it's not deleting everything.  I'd suggest just using 16x for everything because if you're anything like me you've got a lot of crap to delete.  Ain't nobody got time for subpar speeds.

* DELETE/PRIVACY/HIDE/UNHIDE/UNLIKE/BACKUP:
  - I only used DELETE; see next section for info.
  - PRIVACY may come in handy for some of you because Facebook's only bulk privacy editor (public/friends of friends --> friends) only goes one way and is pretty useless.
  - HIDE/UNHIDE could be handy if you just need some stuff to disappear temporarily.
  - UNLIKE seems pointless when you can go into the actual LIKES AND REACTIONS category and just DELETE everything, but maybe it does other things too.
  - BACKUP I have no idea about; I used other tools to back my posts and messages up.

Note that after each run, the extension will reset all parameters to their defaults, so you will have to specify any non-default dates, text filters, the prescan thing, speed, etc. EVERY SINGLE TIME.  That's a minor gripe considering how much time it saves you, but something that could definitely be improved.

=============== WHAT IT CAN AND CANNOT DELETE

Facebook has built an INCREDIBLE amount of redundancy into the Activity Log page.  A lot of the categories on the left hand side of the page (which is what you need to select before running the extension) will overlap with each other, so you may find that a lot of stuff has already been deleted from earlier runthroughs.

Your friends/groups, etc. *should* be left untouched, but there's always a risk with third-party anything.

The below list is based off of my own experiences using it, YMMV.  Sorry if there's anything I've missed, but I'm tired and these categories were all I personally needed to delete; I didn't experiment further.

KEY:  + indicates things that it can delete    - indicates things that it CAN'T delete

+ your posts (including shares, whether on your timeline or others')
+ posts that other people have made on your timeline
+ your photos and videos
- your profile/cover pics (you have to delete these individually from the automatic PROFILE PICTURES and COVER PHOTOS albums)
+ likes & reactions (see section LIKES & REACTIONS below)
- tags in other people's posts (you have to remove tags manually from each post/photo/etc.)
- information in any of your ABOUT pages (may be possible but it didn't work for me; had to delete manually)
- any personal information you've given to FB in the past (see PERSONAL INFORMATION below)

NOTE: The category labelled "Other people's posts to your timeline" for some reason also includes posts in which you've been tagged/mentioned (even if they're on someone else's timeline), and as stated in the list above, the extension WILL NOT remove tags.  So if you select that category, the success rate will be mixed; it'll get rid of *actual* posts people have made on your timeline, but it'll leave all the tagged shit alone.

=============== LIKES & REACTIONS

This was the most time-consuming part of the whole process for me.  For some reason, the extension would only get rid of about three-quarters of the likes/reactions each time I ran it, regardless of whether I chose to delete everything or just stuff within a given year/month -- and also regardless of which speed I selected (at which point I just stuck to using 16x for everything).

Obviously if you run it several times in a row, it'll get faster and faster (as the list of data to be purged gets smaller and smaller), and eventually it'll get rid of everything.  But I found that for any given range, I had to run it about 5 or 6 times to get it down to a clean slate.

This was the ONLY category for which I had to run the extension repeatedly.  All the other ones worked fine first time around -- if somewhat slower.

=============== PERSONAL INFORMATION

This includes things like your address, name, phone number, and so on.  Both present AND past.  So far as I know, you cannot ever change or delete that sort of information.  Once it's given to Facebook, you can *access* but not remove it.

If you go to SETTINGS > GENERAL in Facebook, and click the "Download a copy of your Facebook data" link, you will find all of that information listed inside the zip archive you get -- along with (in the archive's "Security" tab) things like when and for how long you've previously deactivated your account, active session information, login IPs, estimated login locations, cookies, etc.

They retain that information for as long as you have your FB account, and possibly even after you delete said account -- God knows, they don't have a great track record with handling people's data appropriately, so take this entire paste with a huge grain of salt.  There may not be any point to deleting stuff at all, but I figured it was worth a try anyway.

=============== THAT'S ALL, FOLKS

It's 0827 and I'm eating (a very late) lunch; I clearly don't have my shit together.  But I hope this little pseudo-guide helps any of you who're looking to break free of the big blue tentacled monster, or at least restrict how much of your life and information it gets to touch inappropriately behind closed doors.  I don't need or want thanks, but the more of you who leave that hellhole or learn to use it in a smarter, more aware way, the happier I'll be.

Do me a favour.  Understand that there is an inherent risk in using ANY online service, not just Facebook -- you give probably just as much information if not more to Google and other online ecosystems and websites.  If you MUST use them, at least be aware of the risks you're exposing yourself to.  Don't give services or websites information that you don't absolutely have to.  Ideally, read the EULA *before* signing up to things.

Learn to protect yourself -- don't just trust your service providers -- because sometimes when your data goes AWOL, or is misused, it's as much your fault as theirs.  The ultimate responsibility for who holds your personal information, and how it's used, belongs to you.

I'm out. ✌