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Deleting Facebook

robertheaton.com

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Re: Deleting Facebook

#31

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #25
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #12

Those who are planning to delete all Facebook activity(posts) instead of deleting FB account itself, please note that FB seems to be hiding posts at random in the activity log when it detects unusual deleting spree and pops it up on a later date at a random interval. I still find some 10 year old cringe post being the only post in my timeline occasionally, something which should have been deleted several years ago wh…

I am glad to hear I am not the only one - these old posts would appear over a course of months sometimes. I used an automation tool to delete eveything and then I went and manually clicked through the Activity log and deleted everything I could. I did several of these rounds to clear everything.

I would still recommend checking frequently, my recent old post popped up a year after any such incident.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#33

Post by yakubin »

willxinc wrote: post #29
justinclift wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder if this is just an example of how their particular "distributed, eventually consistent" platform operates due to CAP tradeoffs?

This is more likely the case then some conspiracy against users.

Software bugs in practice are rarely caused by fundamental problems. Sloppiness, incompetence and, in this case, different priorities are much more likely. Removing data is not a priority for Facebook.

People like to invoke all those theorems from computer science. That gives them an air of being knowledgeable. But at the end of the day, it's much more common that the program malfunctions not because of the halting problem, but because the language it was written in doesn't do bounds-checking on arrays, someone made an off-by-one error, or someone copy-pasted some code and the objective of the system was data collection, not data deletion, so the task of reviewing and testing the code was deprioritized in favour of something more profitable.

But talking about how you struggle daily with the fundamental problems of the universe sounds so much cooler.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#34

Post by chasd00 »

i just trimmed my friends to actual friends, i'm not sure of my other settings. Maybe i'm just lucky but i don't have any issues with my account.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#35

Post by bzb6 »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #12

Those who are planning to delete all Facebook activity(posts) instead of deleting FB account itself, please note that FB seems to be hiding posts at random in the activity log when it detects unusual deleting spree and pops it up on a later date at a random interval. I still find some 10 year old cringe post being the only post in my timeline occasionally, something which should have been deleted several years ago wh…

That’s most likely a cache bug.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#36

Post by jayski »

I closed mine 3 months ago. Among many positive changes this has had in my life, one I havent been seen mentioned is that now I call/msg people I care about often.

Before I would never feel like I missed someone and just call them. Its like fb artificially satisfies this need for human connection. Its interesting to notice these kinds of effects you weren't aware of.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#37

Post by Daniel_sk »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #31
Daniel_sk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad to hear I am not the only one - these old posts would appear over a course of months sometimes. I used an automation tool to delete eveything and then I went and manually clicked through the Activity log and deleted everything I could. I did several of these rounds to clear everything.

I would still recommend checking frequently, my recent old post popped up a year after any such incident.

I deleted my FB account completely a month ago, so now I don't need to :-).

Re: Deleting Facebook

#38

Post by cmclaren »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #12

Those who are planning to delete all Facebook activity(posts) instead of deleting FB account itself, please note that FB seems to be hiding posts at random in the activity log when it detects unusual deleting spree and pops it up on a later date at a random interval. I still find some 10 year old cringe post being the only post in my timeline occasionally, something which should have been deleted several years ago wh…

I encountered this problem a number of times. I believe, in my case at least, that I noticed a pattern. I believe that facebook's activity log filters posts related to disabled accounts.

I think that when someone decides to re-enable their disabled account, your posts related to their account re-appear in your activity log. Therefore, one can never be sure if all activity is deleted, and one must iteratively return to the activity log every so often to delete re-appearing posts.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#39

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

malwrar wrote: post #28

Somehow I’ve never had a Facebook account this entire time, is there anything I’ve been missing with it? I keep seeing posts like this, but I haven’t really understood what makes quitting it so hard.

I think it's partly FOMO, partly sunk cost, and partly https://xkcd.com/386/

Re: Deleting Facebook

#40

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #37
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would still recommend checking frequently, my recent old post popped up a year after any such incident.

I deleted my FB account completely a month ago, so now I don't need to :-).

Great, that's indeed the best solution for this problem. I don't use any realtime communication platforms, so I'm still having FB for emergencies say for asking blood(have faced the need before) but I'm running out patience and having moral dilemma very so often.
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