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I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

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Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#11

Post by k-mcgrady »

isomorphic wrote: post #4

I "deactivated" my Facebook account long ago. I'd like to delete it, but that apparently involves sacrificing some small animal and studying the entrails for clues. I deleted by Google+ account(s) recently, as well. I have several Twitter accounts with no tweets. I'm thinking of sanitizing my LinkedIn account soon. It's not that I'm anti-social (well, maybe); I am just one of those elder geeks who once dreamt of trul…

I deleted my Twitter account, LinkedIn, and Google+ a couple of years ago. I also Googled myself and slowly removed myself from every other service I haven't used in years. Facebook was the only one I kept as I get a lot of value from it. The only server that has crawled back into my life is Google+, and only for one reason - Android. It's the easiest way to backup all my photos. Not to mention the fact I also use Youtube, Google Music, Gmail etc. and it's only a matter of time until a G+ account was forced on me again. However I don't post to the G+ account and I think I've only followed one or two people.

Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#12

Post by k-mcgrady »

The author keeps referencing posting 'links and videos'. I guess the value you get from Facebook depends on how you use it. I occasionally post a cool video I've found (and I usually post that specifically on the wall of someone I think would like it) but 80% of the stuff I post and my friends post is not links to content on other sites. Most of the content posted are photos or people messaging each other through wall posts rather than PM. Although it's obviously not all useful to me it makes Facebook's Timeline feature more interesting. Going back and seeing links posted would be quite boring. Seeing messages people posts to me or photos or comments on an event we were at are nice to look back on.

Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#14

Post by achamayou »

Casseres wrote: post #7
thirdsight wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I'd rather prefer someone to not invent the next Facebook. It reveals the human trait that despite best intentions, when shareholders get involved, cash is king regardless of the ethical stance the company supposedly takes.

Good point. In my mind, ideally the next big social media platform will be P2P and open source. I have some ideas on how this might work and the features this would include, but I've never hashed them out since my programming ability doesn't approach the level required for such an undertaking. Maybe I will as a thought experiment and publish my ideas so that anyone can use them.

Are you aware of Diaspora ? It's both distributed and open source.

Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#15

Post by diminoten »

isomorphic wrote: post #4

I "deactivated" my Facebook account long ago. I'd like to delete it, but that apparently involves sacrificing some small animal and studying the entrails for clues. I deleted by Google+ account(s) recently, as well. I have several Twitter accounts with no tweets. I'm thinking of sanitizing my LinkedIn account soon. It's not that I'm anti-social (well, maybe); I am just one of those elder geeks who once dreamt of trul…

Deleting your Facebook is difficult? I believe mine is hard deleted (not deactivated), and it was the same workflow as deactivating it, if I remember correctly. I just clicked "delete" instead of "deactivate" or whatever.

Facebook leaves the account deactivated for a week so you can ponder on your choice, but if you don't do anything, it was my understanding that the account gets deleted.

Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#16

Post by personlurking »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #9
avolcano wrote: post #6

Ooh, cool. I was just idly wondering today whether I could easily delete all my posts from high school (full of angst about calculus and bus rides). If Facebook actually wants people to be using their service in twenty years, they should really build timeline cleansing in.

>> "I was just idly wondering today whether I could easily delete all my posts from high school (full of angst about calculus and bus rides)." Although I agree with your feature request why does it matter to you that that stuff is there? I enjoy going back through my timeline (maybe once a year or so) and seeing old things. There may be a few things that make me cringe but there's nothing so embarrassing that it woul…

Probably just me but that sounds crazy (very possible you use it normally while I don't). I've deleted then returned to FB many times. Even when I'm not deleting my account, I always clean out my past posts, sometimes a few days later (after posting them) while other times I'll wait a few weeks. If I add a new profile pic, I usually delete the old one. Also, I talk to people via PM.

Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#18

Post by shortstuffsushi »

>> On average, it took 20 to 30 minutes to purge a month’s worth of posts. After about 12 hours of hand-deleting stories, I decided it was time to automate.

12 hours of deleting by hand? I don't know if I could even do 20-30 minutes worth without seeking a tool.

That's dedication, or something.

Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#19

Post by selmnoo »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #18

>> On average, it took 20 to 30 minutes to purge a month’s worth of posts. After about 12 hours of hand-deleting stories, I decided it was time to automate. 12 hours of deleting by hand? I don't know if I could even do 20-30 minutes worth without seeking a tool. That's dedication, or something.

You'd be surprised how dedicated normal people are when they don't know that these simple things can be automated. I remember about 15 years ago when I was a freshman in highschool, and found my sister replacing every space after period on her 40-page thesis with two spaces. I told her of the find/replace all feature, and she was pretty happy. Over the years I've gone through a crazy number of incidents where normal people are spending tens of hours on things that would literally take me less than maybe 30 seconds to do.

Re: I Decided to Delete All My Facebook Activity

#20

Post by chippy »

What most people seem to be missing and which the article does not properly explain is why some people think it is necessary to delete each item individually.

Yes you can both deactivate (soft delete) an account and you can actually say to facebook to actually delete it. Deleting an account does not allegedly remove your data from the Facebook servers. Deleting items however will remove your data from the servers. The idea is that you should delete each little thing first, and then delete the actual account.

From the FAQ at http://suicidemachine.org/ :

"Facebook and Co. are going to hold all your informations and pictures on their servers forever! We still hope that by removing your contact details and friend connections one-by-one, your data is being cached out from their backup servers. This can happen after days, weeks, months or even years. So merely deactivating the account is just not enough!"

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