https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3yz9k/how-to-delete-your-facebook-permanently

I’ve been contemplating deleting my Facebook for years, but every time I’d come close to making the jump I’d come up with some excuse about why it would be impossible. I needed Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family while living out of the country. I needed it to stay in touch with friends who live abroad. I needed it to stay on top of news. I needed it for my job. I needed it to validate my existence with a constant stream of engagement.

This resulted in a long on-and-off relationship with the platform, in which I would deactivate my profile for weeks or months at a time, only to come crawling back. Recently, however, it occurred to me that I hadn’t used or even thought about Facebook in over six months. Then the Cambridge Analytica story broke, which revealed just how easily Facebook’s massive collection of user data could be mishandled. It seemed like as good a time as any to finally pull the plug and permanently delete my Facebook profile.