Facebook’s new “Manage Activity” feature lets you purge your old posts in bulk

Turns out, taking a quick look at your Facebook timeline over the years is a really effective way to reflect upon your life; see how you’ve grown and how far you’ve come. And the other way to analyze it is how it can also be an excellent reminder of things you may not necessarily be proud of now. Posts shared, statuses updated, etc. years ago most likely don’t define who you are now. While you could’ve always deleted them if you’d like, the tedious process of having to go through them individually was a turn off for many. However, Facebook has now rolled out a way to delete your account activity in a large quantity. Under the new “Manage Activity” feature, Facebook is, for the first time, letting your delete posts in bulk. Let’s find out more.

Facebook Manage Activity: Delete Posts in Bulk

In the early stage, Facebook is rolling out this feature only in the official mobile apps: Facebook (Android | iOS), and Facebook Lite (Android | iOS). Oh, and I was today years old when I found out that the Lite version of the app has a dedicated dark mode while the standard one lacks it. What?! Anyway, you can navigate to this feature in the following steps:

1. Click the hamburger menu (the one with three parallel lines) on the top-right (or bottom-right in some regions) and select “Settings & Privacy“.
2. From there, go to “Settings” and click the “Activity Log” option under the “Your Facebook Information” header. Or in the case of some users, the “Go to Activity Log” option may be visible in the user profile page itself.
3. Here, you can see the “Manage Activity” tag at the top, alongside “Archive” and “Trash“.

Or, you can also redirect to the “Activity Log” from the profile settings option. This is that little box with three dots […] on top of your profile page.

How does it work?

And this is where the magic happens! Using the “Filters” option, you can curate the category of your Facebook activity to list out; including a custom time range, or posts with specific people that you’ve created. Then, you just select the ones you wish to archive or send to trash.

Here, the “Archive” option is like setting the privacy of the selected posts (and other activities) to “Only Me”. You can restore the posts to their original state from the archive if you feel like it too. This is different from “Trash“, which is where the deleted posts go. Items in trash stay put for up to 30 days, then they get permanently deleted. But of course, you can manually delete them permanently from the trash bin without having to wait a month for Facebook to do it for you. Additionally, you can also restore posts from trash, but you gotta do it before the 30-day limitation expires.

Also Read: Facebook launches “Messenger Rooms” for group video calls

But since the update is fresh off the oven, there are many areas for improvement. The first and a surprisingly weird nuisance I observed was how selecting the posts, and navigating through the whole thing was smoother on Facebook Lite, compared to the standard Facebook app. Also, it would’ve been nice to be able to select items in a bulk as well. What I mean is: say I had a ton of posts I wished to delete of the same day. Yet, I have to go through them one by one and I can’t just select the day and be done with it. Let’s hope the company keeps working on it to make it much for efficient and simple to use.

Going forward

At the end of the day, this is clearly a positive step from Facebook (all things considered). Someone’s social media presence has inadvertently become a crucial factor in judging them; especially for their professional career. There have been numerous reports about people losing their existing job or a potential one because somehow their past activity on the web caught up to their present. So, the ability to perform a mass-deletion of your Facebook activities is a welcome update.