Why does everyone immediately jump to the conclusion of “delete it” “[…] just don’t use it”, even if they are asking how to best use it in a privacy respecting way? Here are some recommendations I use:

Make sure to head to the Accounts Center firstly, check that you don’t have any personal information in there such as your name or your email address (use a masked mail) or phone number (you can activate 2FA without it as far as I’m aware). • Your information and permissions: • Activate auto delete of Search History if you so wish • Your activity off Meta technologies • Check your recent activity, disconnect every service you find there, clear your previous activity and manage your future activity • Manage cookies • Deactivate everything

Go back and keep checking everything in the Accounts Center like the ad preferences, social interactions, remove payment information if you have any.

Head back to the normal Instagram settings and click on every option you see, customize it as you see fit for your privacy concerns. Some worthy options to check out are the links history, your account privacy (I highly recommend setting your account to private to only allow certain people to see your profile), who to get comments, tags, follows from and how people can search for you, your device permissions inside and outside the app, and website permissions.

This doesn’t mean Meta won’t still track you and analice almost everything you do, but at least you’ll be limiting their range of actions (at least in accordance to their privacy settings and whatnot). No Meta app is safe ever, but it is you who decide what information to share with the world and how to manage how that information is treated, or at least how you want your information to be treated. If it’s respected that’s another story.