It seems, from a preview for journalists, that the GDPR changes that Facebook will be making to its privacy controls, and especially the data controls a user has, are rather unimpressive. I had hoped that with the new option to select ranges of your data for download, you would also be able to delete specific ranges of data. This would be a welcome change as current options are only deleting every single data item by hand, or deleting everything by deleting your account. Under the GDPR I had expected more control over data on FB.

It also seems they still keep the design imbalanced, favouring ‘let us do anything’ as the simplest route for users to click through, and presenting other options very low key, and the account deletion option still not directly accessible in your settings.

They may or may not be deemed to have done enough towards implementing GDPR by the data protection authorities in the EU after May 25th, but that’s of little use to anyone now.

So my intention to delete my FB history still means the full deletion of my account. Which will be effective end of this week, when the 14 day grace period ends.