Obviously not everyone is ready to live in a post-truth world. Following Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will ditch professional fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes-style crowdsourcing approach to accountability, searches for deleting Meta accounts has improved significantly.

Searches for “how to delete Facebook” and “how to delete Instagram” topped the days after the announcement that accuracy was no longer a priority for posting on the platforms, according to Google Trends data. Related searches like “how to quit facebook,” “how to delete threads account,” and “how to delete instagram account without logging in” also achieved trend status in breakout, meaning they saw a 5,000% increase or higher in interest, say TechCrunch pointed out.

Appropriately, Facebook’s competitors are also seeing increased interest. Bluesky saw a nearly 1,000% increase in searches during the same period that saw people looking to exit the Meta-verse of social apps. Zuckerberg accused people who left his company’s platforms of “attribute signaling,” probably because he thinks everyone else is as unscrupulous and malleable as he is and won’t do anything unscrupulous.

Alas, for those looking for a landing spot, there aren’t many suitable substitutes for platforms like Instagram—or Facebook, for that matter—for people who intend to leave those platforms as they are. post-fact AI slop factories.

Zuckerberg has successfully cornered large swathes of the social web, and escaping his grip is difficult—especially when it takes convincing the people you want to stay connected to follow. Facebook has successfully gathered more than three billion monthly active users worldwide and Instagram has two billion. Want to chat with your friends? Meta-owned WhatsApp has approx three billion active chatters and Messenger has more than one billion himself. Even if you delete your accounts or you didn’t create one to begin with, Meta retained data about you and continues to track your activity across the web for this big business in digital advertising.

Of course, that shouldn’t stop you from trying to limit your exposure to the tentacles of the Meta monster. And statistically speaking, since you probably got here by searching for something along the lines of “how to delete facebook,” the least we can do is give you what you’re looking for. You get your guide, we get a few clicks, and everyone leaves happy.

How To Delete Your Facebook Account

A quick introduction here: Facebook, through what can best be described as a deliberately inefficient user interface, has created a labyrinthine maze of menus that you must navigate to find. the option to delete your account—and that maze is different. depending on which operating system, platform, and version of Facebook you are accessing.

That said, if you’re on an iPhone or Android device:

1. Click the three-bar “Menu” button on the bottom right of the Facebook app
2. Tap the “Settings & privacy” header
3. If “Accounts Center” appears in this menu, tap it. If not, tap “Settings” and the app should redirect you to “Accounts Center” after a popup explaining its function.
4. Tap “Personal details”
5. Tap “Account ownership and control”
6. Tap “Deactivate or remove”
7. Select the account or profile you want to delete
8. Tap “Delete account”
9. Tap “Continue” and follow the on-screen instructions to confirm

If the Accounts Center appears for you, you should be able to delete your Facebook and Instagram accounts at the same time, assuming they are linked.

If you’re viewing Facebook on a desktop, the same steps apply, except your first step is to click on your profile picture in the top right. From here, find “Settings & privacy” and follow the same steps as above.

Whether you’re on the desktop or mobile apps, if the Accounts Center isn’t visible for you, do the following:

1. Follow steps 1 and 2 above
2. Once in “Settings & privacy,” tap “Profile Access and Control”
3. Tap “Deactivate and Remove”
4. Select “Delete Account” and tap “Continue to Account Deletion”
5. Follow the on-screen instructions to confirm

How to Delete Your Instagram Account

If your Instagram account is not linked to your Facebook account, you can remove it separately from the iOS and Android app by doing the following:

1. Tap “profile” or your profile picture in the bottom right

2. Tap the three-bar “More” menu in the top right

3. Tap “Accounts Center”

4. Tap “Personal details”

5. Tap “Account ownership and control”
6. Tap “Deactivate or remove”
7. Tap the account you want to delete
8. Tap “Delete account”
9. Tap “Continue” and follow the on-screen steps to confirm

If you are visiting Instagram on desktop, your first step is to Click on “More” at the bottom left of the screen, then click on Settings. From there, follow steps 3 to 9 above.