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How to permanently delete a Facebook account

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Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#11

Post by Joeboy »

skrebbel wrote: post #7

To all the skeptics in threads like these: asking that Facebook actually, entirely, erase all your data isn't a reasonable demand. Unless, if course, you're also OK with Facebook's walled-garden, Facebook-is-the-Internet, Compuserve-wasn't-so-bad strategy. Anyone who ever tried to delete content from the internet knows this: The Internet Archive has long since made a copy of what you're trying to delete. Anything you…

Not sure I understand. If Facebook were federated, it would not be reasonable to expect it to delete your data for the practical reasons you mention. Facebook is not federated, so they presumably are able to delete your data. Maybe it's naive to expect them to behave in an honest or considerate manner, but not it's not unreasonable to ask it as far as I can see.

Edit: Of course there's nothing they can do if somebody's screenshotted your post or stored its contents in their brain, but that's not what we're talking about.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#12

Post by skrebbel »

kryten wrote: post #9
skrebbel wrote: post #7

To all the skeptics in threads like these: asking that Facebook actually, entirely, erase all your data isn't a reasonable demand. Unless, if course, you're also OK with Facebook's walled-garden, Facebook-is-the-Internet, Compuserve-wasn't-so-bad strategy. Anyone who ever tried to delete content from the internet knows this: The Internet Archive has long since made a copy of what you're trying to delete. Anything you…

It's perfectly possible and reasonable to delete all of your data. It's just hard. We have to do this with our clients if they shift off our platform and believe me, it's not much fun deleting 20-100Gb datasets from a shared database with over 2000 tables in it on production kit. But we do it, because we are honest. Facebook are dishonest. Simple as.

Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean by "our platform", but if I post a youtube video, it gets popular, but I get ashamed of it and decide to delete it again, the video will have spread far and wide to other video sites again.

Some for public web pages and the internet archive, for stackoverflow answers/wikipedia entries and SEO rats, and so on.

How is "your platform" going to help me delete my embarrassing drunk student video from the internet's video sites?

The only way "your platform" can do this, is by actively working to block public access to that video in the first place. Then you can have fun (or not) deleting those 20-100Gb datasets. My point is that that means accepting that you're posting stuff to a walled garden.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#13

Post by greyman »

skrebbel wrote: post #7

To all the skeptics in threads like these: asking that Facebook actually, entirely, erase all your data isn't a reasonable demand. Unless, if course, you're also OK with Facebook's walled-garden, Facebook-is-the-Internet, Compuserve-wasn't-so-bad strategy. Anyone who ever tried to delete content from the internet knows this: The Internet Archive has long since made a copy of what you're trying to delete. Anything you…

> I'd rather that my content belongs to everybody than that it belongs to Facebook. But you can't have it both ways.

You can publish your stuff on Facebook or G+ as "public"... I saw some people are doing that, using it as a blogging platform. Then it belongs to everybody but you are also taking advantage of the social elements on those networks.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#14

Post by restlessmedia »

paulannesley wrote: post #10

Worth adding, because it's not mentioned on the linked page: When I deleted my account in 2010, there was a one month cooling off period, during which any sign-in would cancel the deletion request. Perhaps that's sensible to catch malicious/accidental deletions, but I imagine it also makes it hard for Facebook addicts to leave.

This is very true. I can't bear the deafening sound of trumpets blowing on FB so rarely visit it. On occasions though, it's service as a 'Friends Reunited v2' works well for me.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#15

Post by sdoering »

greyman wrote: post #13
skrebbel wrote: post #7

To all the skeptics in threads like these: asking that Facebook actually, entirely, erase all your data isn't a reasonable demand. Unless, if course, you're also OK with Facebook's walled-garden, Facebook-is-the-Internet, Compuserve-wasn't-so-bad strategy. Anyone who ever tried to delete content from the internet knows this: The Internet Archive has long since made a copy of what you're trying to delete. Anything you…

> I'd rather that my content belongs to everybody than that it belongs to Facebook. But you can't have it both ways. You can publish your stuff on Facebook or G+ as "public"... I saw some people are doing that, using it as a blogging platform. Then it belongs to everybody but you are also taking advantage of the social elements on those networks.

No it "belongs" (in your sense of the word) to the platform used to publish it. You loose a significant part of your rights to that content (be it public or private).

The only way to "own" your content is to publish it on your own domain on a host you just pay for storage. You might then link to the content via your (so called) social playground of choice. But you will own the content in a "normal" use of the word.

You can even explicitly state a copyright-info and lay out your terms, that tell everybody that this is your creation, your belonging...

Posting it publicly on any platform that you do not own, will end in you loosing rights to your creation.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#16

Post by kybernetyk »

> Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you log into your account within the next 14 days, you will have the option to cancel your request.

I guess I better delete all cookies before I accidentally get logged in back.

Why can't they just delete it?

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#17

Post by D9u »

kryten wrote: post #9
skrebbel wrote: post #7

To all the skeptics in threads like these: asking that Facebook actually, entirely, erase all your data isn't a reasonable demand. Unless, if course, you're also OK with Facebook's walled-garden, Facebook-is-the-Internet, Compuserve-wasn't-so-bad strategy. Anyone who ever tried to delete content from the internet knows this: The Internet Archive has long since made a copy of what you're trying to delete. Anything you…

It's perfectly possible and reasonable to delete all of your data. It's just hard. We have to do this with our clients if they shift off our platform and believe me, it's not much fun deleting 20-100Gb datasets from a shared database with over 2000 tables in it on production kit. But we do it, because we are honest. Facebook are dishonest. Simple as.

     *Anything you post on the internet, the real, open internet, is forever*
I've tried looking for stuff I posted on craigslist 5 or 6 years ago and nothing was in the wayback machine, only dead links to a few posts.

Apparently the crawls of the site only went a couple/few layers deep, as well as crawls not being conducted daily, and some years had only 2 or 3 crawls for the entire year.

I haven't tried searching my old facebook posts yet though, maybe some sites are more thoroughly catalogued than others.

Perhaps some other entity is storing my old posts, but I doubt that the NSA will allow me to access my own data.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#18

Post by thejosh »

kybernetyk wrote: post #16

> Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you log into your account within the next 14 days, you will have the option to cancel your request. I guess I better delete all cookies before I accidentally get logged in back. Why can't they just delete it?

What if someone knew your password and requested it to be deleted? Wouldn't you be "Why can't they just not delete it after a period of days?"?

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#19

Post by kybernetyk »

thejosh wrote: post #18
kybernetyk wrote: post #16

> Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you log into your account within the next 14 days, you will have the option to cancel your request. I guess I better delete all cookies before I accidentally get logged in back. Why can't they just delete it?

What if someone knew your password and requested it to be deleted? Wouldn't you be "Why can't they just not delete it after a period of days?"?

Ah, the old security vs freedom debate.

I would know whom to blame if I had used a weak password that got cracked in order to delete my account. And I think you should expect the same from every reasonable adult.

But yeah, FB should add a stronger auth for that dialog - more than a password and a captcha field.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#20

Post by officemonkey »

martinml wrote: post #5
rlu wrote: post #3

At least I have the option to delete my FB account. On the other hand, Google has lately been aggressively pushing me to convert my YouTube account into a G+ account. Once this is actually forced upon me, is there any way to 'delete' my Google+ account without deleting my YouTube one?

It seems so: https://plus.google.com/u/0/downgrade/

Thank you. I never use Google+ and I was so irritated by their youtube migration attempts recently that I didn't look back.
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