A Project by the Dutch Media Art Collective SETUP
The networking site Facebook, founded in 2003, was once the beating heart of our online social world—the place where we felt connected, friendships were formed, and self-discovery developed. These days, the platform has become a symbol of everything that can go wrong with social media: polarization, hate, disinformation, data extraction, and AI slop. When Facebook is mentioned, a widespread sense of unease is evoked. We should have cancelled our accounts a long time ago, yet many of us still cling on; there are still more than 3 billion active monthly users worldwide. Instead of calling on guilt and pushing alternatives, SETUP asked itself the simple question: why can’t we let it go?
In public debates about social media, our emotional attachment to these platforms is rarely discussed. Facebook isn’t just an app. It’s a digital diary of our lives, full of memories, relationships, and events. To start that conversation, we built the Facebook Museum: a place where we collectively can say goodbye to Facebook, where we both celebrate and question this platform’s beautiful and ugly sides. Before we can let go of Facebook, we first need to understand how and why we’re attached and what role Facebook played in our lives.
In July 2025, the Dutch Media Art Collective SETUP opened the world’s first temporary Facebook Museum in the main hall of Utrecht Central Station, the Netherlands’ busiest railway station. A pop-up museum where visitors could donate their own Facebook data, relive memories, and discuss their digital identity. The project attracted over 5,000 visitors and received widespread national media attention. The response illustrated the heartfelt need to reflect not only critically, but also emotionally and collectively on our digital past – and with it our digital future.
In December 2025, SETUP received financial support from the Dutch SIDN Fund to scale up and diversify the Facebook Museum in 2026.
Please visit www.facebook.museum (at the moment only in Dutch) to get an impression of the experience, the press coverage and visual material. This introductory posting gives an overview of the different elements of the museum and what SETUP imagines are possible directions the project can take.

What’s there to experience? Visitors can participate in the curation of what should be remembered about our joint time on Facebook, score keepsakes in the museum shop and vote on a suitable location for the permanent Facebook Museum. In addition, they can donate their Facebook data, reflect on their favorite Facebook moments and leave a card for this on a remembrance wall.
Existing Museum Sections:  
Pedestals with Objects and Stories
Multiple pedestals feature objects symbolising the experiences of six people who have had a startling, or sometimes exemplary, experience with Facebook. The objects appeal to the imagination, such as a cat collar, a pile of pubic hair, or a squash racket. Each pedestal reads the opening of the said story, accompanied by a QR code that the audience can scan with their phone to explore the story further. The stories alternate between positive and negative experiences about, on, and around Facebook. From testimonials of cosy crochet Facebook group members, to traumatised content moderators or victims of online doxing. The individual stories can be read here (in Dutch).
Preservation Wall
The preservation wall is a large blue wall holding three screens on which typical Facebook content passes by: cat pictures, illustrious Facebook groups, and memes. Visitors can vote on what content to preserve as Facebook’s cultural heritage by pressing the corresponding buttons below the screens.
Remembrance Wall
Like the preservation wall, the remembrance wall is a place of memories and nostalgia. Visitors can leave their personal (both beautiful and unpleasant) experiences with Facebook on the wall. Other visitors can browse through these testimonials and reflect on everything we have experienced together on this platform.
Data Donation Box
As the text on the Museum facade indicates (“Don’t delete your Facebook profile yet!”), we do not advise people to remove their Facebook profile indiscriminately. In addition to a trip down memory lane and insight into how culture-defining Facebook is (and has been), visitors also have the opportunity to donate their own Facebook data. They can put their downloaded Facebook data on a USB stick and submit it to the museum, to ensure that this valuable digital cultural heritage is not lost. We have made a clear step-by-step plan for the visitor on how to export your data from Facebook, archive it, and donate it to the museum if desired:  https://www.setup.nl/app/uploads/2025/12/a5large-fbdata-wikkelvouw-1mmbleed-fogra39.pdf
Scale Model of the Proposed Permanent Museum
Halfway through the exhibition space, you will come across a scale model of the permanent museum in the shape of a huge F. Next to the model, there’s a map of the Netherlands. Here, visitors can vote where the future permanent museum should be located, by pasting a blue sticker on their desired city, village or place.

Merchandise
An exit through the gift shop. At the moment available are: In Memoriam candles, t-shirts, postcards, wooden USB ‘coffins’, tote bags, booklets (a DIY guide to Facebook scrapbooking), and (tracking) cookies.
Future Exhibition Options:
1. The Complete Museum Setup (unmanned)
A setup which we can show for a month or more, and tell our full story. In essence, it’s the collection of all museum components as we used them during the pilot at Utrecht Central Station, yet adapted to the context where visitors can look around independently. No crew or museum hosts from SETUP are required for this. The Utrecht Central setup was focused on luring passers-by, selling merchandise and talking to visitors.
2. Small Museum Setup (unmanned)
A setup that we can place at a desired location for at least a week or a month. It is a more compact and focused version of the exhibition at Utrecht Central Station.
3. The Festival Experience (manned)
A setup for a few days or a long weekend, in which visitors quickly get a compact but strong impression. During Betweter Festival 2025 (a science festival in Utrecht with 2,500 visitors), we have already carried out a successful pilot. Here, visitors can share memories and craft mourning cards for their favourite Facebook moments using content from their own Facebook profile. For this, we provide photo printers, scrapbook materials, and other decoration materials. This activity results in spontaneous conversations about digital memories. If desired, we can adjust this experience to the context of your event.

Talks, Keynotes and Panels that SETUP Offers
Polarisation, screen addiction, brain rot. Our conscience speaks increasingly stronger to leave Facebook. However, this is easier said than done. How do we find emotional closure from this platform? And how do we preserve all the digital cultural heritage we have collectively created on it?
A talk of your preferred duration about our research findings on our attachment to big tech’s social media platforms in launching the Facebook Museum, and why it is so difficult to break free from these. We also provide insight into the design process of the Facebook Museum. Depending on the request, we can focus the talk on one or multiple of the themes and topics below. Additionally, it is possible for one or more of our colleagues to take part in a panel on the themes and topics below. If desired, we can also assemble and/or moderate a panel.
Themes that can be discussed:

• Influence and dependence on big tech platforms (both individual and societal)
• Collective attachment to big tech platforms
• Detachment of big tech’s social media (both rational and emotional), and what alternative strategies and language to develop for it
• Moving away from big tech’s social media on a business / professional level
• Design fiction, future fiction, speculative design methods:how to explore alternative future scenarios by means of artistic research
• Digital cultural heritage and how to curate, archive, and make it sustainably available

If you are interested in one or more of our Facebook Museum components, we can send a quote tailored to preferences and adjustments. For this, please contact Jiska Koenders – jiska@setup.nl
This first overview of the Facebook Museum project was written by SETUP’s staff member Marissa Memelink, together with Geert Lovink@INC.

About SETUP
The Utrecht-based Dutch cultural organization SETUP, founded in 2010, researches the impact of technology on society. Our focus isn’t investigating technology as a technical object (“how does it work?”) or as an expressive medium (“how can I make art with it?”) but as a force field within our community. SETUP creates accessible designs to make these power dynamics and their abstract effects tangible for a large audience. In doing so, we focus on the everyday future of technology. Because stories about new technology still often revolve around science fiction themes: a distant future where either everything is possible – or everything goes wrong. AI, for example, in 100 years will either “solve all our problems” or “take all our jobs.” But these scenarios omit important questions. Who pays the price for this new technology? What power does it create, and where is this situated? What interests are at play, and what ideologies constitute the design of these systems? That’s why we explore near-future scenarios in our artistic research, for which we look ahead a maximum of 5 to 10 years.
SETUP’s mission is to create a technology-critical society. A society in which everyone can participate in discussions and reflections on the development and deployment of new technology. Eventually, this will lead to other hardware, platforms, and power structures. But it all starts with a critical community surrounding these systems, actively exploring what a healthy relationship with technology means for them. Our philosophy is that in order to move towards an alternative future with technology, one first has to be able to imagine it. We believe the arts provide the free space necessary to question and investigate these alternative scenarios. Artists play a crucial role in this: creating images and agendas, offering a broader perspective, and posing critical questions. Not just as a mirror, but also as a crowbar. www.setup.nl
Previous Projects by SETUP
Since its foundation in 2010, SETUP’s projects have been focused on the Dutch-speaking community and have always had a critical yet cheeky-hilarious approach. Some examples of previous projects:
The pottery-robot Man and machine are often portrayed in the media as competitors. But can we explore a complementary relationship? Forget all the robots that ‘catch up’, ‘beat’ or ‘replace’ us. Come and merge into a beautiful symbiosis with our pottery robot. – https://www.setup.nl/projecten/de-pottenbakrobot/
Nude prompting workshop Does the advent of AI image generators make nude model drawing more accessible than ever? We put it to the test and bumped into more interesting hiccups than initially expected… https://www.setup.nl/projecten/naaktprompten-naaktmodel-tekenen-met-ai/
Project dodo – an exoskeleton for the dodo Through advanced biogenetic engineering, scientists are currently de-extincting the long-lost dodo bird. But once returned to earth, how do we make the dodo 21st-century proof? A project exploring human techno-solutionist tendencies. https://www.setup.nl/projecten/an-exoskeleton-for-the-dodo/
Alternative stock photography for technology Shiny humanoid robots, green Matrix code or brains full of zeros and ones. Photos accompanying tech news leave a lot to be desired. They maintain a mystified impression of what the technology is and what it means for us. Could it be done differently? https://www.setup.nl/projecten/nieuwe-stockfotos-voor-technologie/
Audio-visual material about the Facebook Museum:
Photos (credits: Bas de Meijer): https://www.flickr.com/photos/setuputrecht/albums/72177720327588487/with/54659546529
Video: https://www.setup.nl/video/het-facebook-museum/

Articles by SETUP about the Facebook Museum (in Dutch):
We richten een Facebook Museum op
Stichting Facebook Museum is officieel – dit is ons bestuur
Na het Facebook Museum willen we sociale media niet meer verslavend noemen
Sociale media zijn massaal toxisch verklaard, tijd voor een waardig afscheid
Press publications (in Dutch):
Item op Radi0 1
https://www.nporadio1.nl/nieuws/wetenschap-techniek/ac2ab72e-c957-44e4-82a7-e92e2d0a9c02/afscheid-nemen-van-facebook-makkelijker-gezegd-dan-gedaan
Item op BNR nieuwsradio
https://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/tech-innovatie/10577510/eerste-facebookmuseum-ter-wereld-in-utrecht-digitaal-cultureel-erfgoed
Artikel op NOS online
https://nos.nl/regio/utrecht/artikel/654177-waarom-we-facebook-niet-gebruiken-maar-ook-niet-kunnen-loslaten
Artikel in Telegraaf
https://www.telegraaf.nl/video/uniek-facebook-museum-opent-doneer-jouw-data/77742247.html
Artikel in Trouw
https://www.trouw.nl/binnenland/in-utrecht-kun-je-al-rouwen-om-facebook-het-platform-werd-steeds-vijandiger~b8625de7/
Item in uitzending en online Hart van Nederland
https://www.hartvannederland.nl/het-beste-van-hart/panel/artikelen/facebook-sociale-media-social-hyves-panel-gebruikers-missen
Artikel in AD
https://www.ad.nl/utrecht/facebook-museum-op-utrecht-cs-we-hebben-er-jarenlang-lief-en-leed-gedeeld-die-data-is-waardevol~a439aaf5/
Item in Oranjezomer
https://www.kijk.nl/programmas/de-oranjezomer/SyLYboBPFSs