How to celebrate Facebook celebrating ‘Data Privacy Day’

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, don your fanciest of caps and bust out your most invasive of apps, because it’s that time of year again. That’s right, today, Jan. 28, is Data Privacy Day, and your friends at Facebook want to make sure you’re invited to the party. 

The social media and advertising giant, which has for years been steadily drowning the planet in a tide of surveillance and scandal, wants you to know that it cares about your privacy. So much so, in fact, that the company perhaps most notable for being creepy has taken today’s celebration of data privacy as an opportunity to encourage its users to do a so-called “Privacy Checkup.”   

And what does that mean, exactly? If you guessed “continue to share the exact same amount of personal data with Facebook,” then ding ding ding, you’re a winner. Because in Facebook’s mind, this is merely an opportunity to fine tune what information of yours other people on the platform can access. 

“Take a few minutes to review how you’re currently sharing your information with people on Facebook,” reads the checkup tool, “and with the apps and websites from other companies that you’ve used Facebook to log into.”

Never in the Privacy Checkup does Facebook acknowledge the possibility that you might want to keep your personal data from the company. But that would require a modicum of self-awareness, so I guess we’re not really surprised.   

And neither were people on Twitter, who responded to Facebook’s announcement with, shall we say, some incredulity. 

And so, as Facebook celebrates Data Privacy Day with what amounts to a meaningless rehash of a years-old tool, allow us to propose another way to mark this annual descent into sadness: Namely, delete your Facebook account. 

It’s easy. While logged into Facebook, simply hit this link, click “Delete Account,” and follow the next few steps. 

And with that, you’ve got yourself a true Data Privacy Day celebration to remember.