[Polylactic_acid]

I still have a facebook account for the sole purpose of messaging those people I only contact once a year. Honestly never really used facebook for anything more than a IM platform. I never felt comfortable posting anything since all family members would be seeing it. And I never liked consuming content on it because I found it all to be low quality shitposts and blog spam.

[Fnoord]

Before I deleted Facebook (and severely cut down on my Google usage) I imported the birthday list to my own calendars (on Nextcloud). I added all the contacts in my calendar as well (on Nextcloud). This gets synced with DAVx5 when I'm home on WLAN.

Now I keep contact with these people via WhatsApp (due to network effect it has in The Netherlands) and plain old telephone/e-mail as these are included in their contact info.

Don't quit Facebook right away. First, request your data and import this. Manually backup the data I mentioned above (and consider to remove people). Gradually delete all your posts (there's an addon for it, not sure which one I used). Then make a post you're going to leave Facebook. No drama, no reason required. You're just informing people about it. And then you do it: you go through the process of removing your account, and you never log in again. Ie. remove the password from your password manager.

I've also installed containers for GAFAM, and use a myriad of browser addons to protect my privacy.