The EU have made laws regarding the right to be forgotten. If the companies breach this, they face huge fines, as a percentage of their overall earnings. That said, I am loosing faith in how often they get enforced and how easily you can complain to the authorities about it.

Also, i am in doubt of how much data they can actually maintain, while anonymizing it. So they may keep your data, but remove any personal link to you as a person.

I have filed a GDPR complaint about Facebook with my local data authority, because Facebook deleted my account, but still send me newsletters suggesting people to follow. I filed it January 2024 and only after 10 months did the complain get forwarded to Ireland who, because of some new rule, now has to handle the complaint. It will take for ever, but i don’t really care

Yeah, this is one of the companies that I trust to be doing shady stuff. Especially after the Pay or Ok move they did for 1½ year ago, forcing people to either pay a crazy subscription fee to avoid targeted ads, (for me it was close to €30 a month), or accept them. before that, you could opt out of targeted ads (but not tracking).

That said, even when paying a subscription, they would still track you, and still run suggested content, even from commercial accounts.

I feel your pain. I too am considering creating an account simply because it is needed for work and family stuff.

Here you can have a messenger account without having facebook but even that seem to be performing badly, because i dont have facebook. People have trouble finding me and I can’t always join group chats.

I have considered using an old phone just for Facebook and getting an extra phone number to verify the account with. Then only use Facebook through that device and leave it at home. Maybe I’ll have to give Facebook my info but can as well prohibit then from tracking me

I don’t have one I am sorry. We don’t even have chlorine in ours here any more

You can get magnesium tablets. Adding it to tap water could work but we use water for so many other things besides drinking. There i for example no need for it to be in the water that washing machines use, no need to clean the dishes or your floors in magnesium enriched water either…