How to permanently delete your Facebook account • Hacker News Board

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#241

Post by cratermoon » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

swamp-agr wrote: post #47

The situation is quite interesting here. - Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. - Formally, it's possible to proceed with "Permanently delete my account". - You will even receive email assuring you that two weeks later profile would be completely deleted. - Then, couple years later you'll occasionally seen email from facebook that someone tried to log in into your ("permanently deleted") account. - You'll…

The problem is that fundamentally, to Facebook, a user's login account is a separate thing from the user's profile. You can delete your account, and with a straight face Facebook can assert you've deleted it. But your profile, the mass of data and content that you put on Facebook with your account, and all the data associated with it through their social graph and algorithms, that never gets deleted.

In a very real sense, "you" still exist in Facebook. That's why when, weeks, months, or years later, when you login, Facebook recognizes you. You create a new "account", and Facebook very conveniently associates everything it knows about you (which it never forgot) with your new account.

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#242

Post by quaintdev » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

bborud wrote: post #226

quaintdev wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is flawed. How can you be sure if the policy is enforced at back-end? The better way is to create a solution where users have control over data and the apps interact with data. This should have been the model from the beginning but now I guess it will never happen. Even if someone successfully implements this it will be just as hard IPv6 to adopt if not more.

Audits. (And yes, I've worked for companies that deal with lots of data that has strict retention limits by law, and oh boy were there audits and oh boy are you in trouble if/when you screw up) As for your proposed solution: I don't think I understand what you mean. Could you expand on it?

True audits are really good way to keep companies in check but what about a company like TikTok or companies in other countries where you are not sure if the audits are not compromised.

Regarding the solution I was talking about check out Solid by Tim Berners Lee

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#243

Post by cratermoon » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

rvnx wrote: post #210

winternett wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, for a dentist or doctor's visit, it's totally reasonable. But if you were asked for your ID every time you bought a burger at McDonalds, it would be considered suspect and a potential privacy invasion by most. The same is the case with social media. They don't need your government ID, and they're not authorized to demand it like the health care industry is.

It's called a loyalty card what you describe

The carrot to get you to sign up for the loyalty card is the promise of discount prices. The shelf price says $X, but "Members pay just $Y". Of course $Y is closer to the true price. Sometimes they'll send out a mailer with extra coupons, usually somewhat customized based on your past purchases. But now they get to track all your activity. This is not nefarious to the extent it's used to plan inventory and purchasing, but to the extent that your store profile is sold to other companies, it becomes nefarious.

A casual reading of the terms and conditions might lead a person to object, that it says they don't sell your data. A close reading notes that it says they don't sell to "third parties". But they leave out the fact that any other company the store does business with is not a third party. They technically don't sell your data to them, they provide your data to other companies during the normal course of transacting business with them. Thus, your data flows through the system, unchecked.

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#244

Post by cratermoon » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

nobody9999 wrote: post #131

Nextgrid wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow.

>There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow. Given FB's business model, and the fact that they create "shadow" profiles for folks who don't even have FB accounts, I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend that your account has been "deleted", all the data still exists for their use. Whi…

> I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend that your account has been "deleted", all the data still exists for their use.

They don't even have to pretend to delete your account, they can actually delete it. But through some linguistic slight-of-hand (i.e., lying) they obscure the fact that your account is not all the data they have on you. Your "account", in a strict sense might just be your username and password. It happens to also be associated with the entire pile of data that is a profile. Once a user no longer has an account, it's what you call a "shadow profile".

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#245

Post by NabiDev » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

Just upload some bannable content. That is way faster then regular process.

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#246

Post by trutannus » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

swamp-agr wrote: post #47

The situation is quite interesting here. - Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. - Formally, it's possible to proceed with "Permanently delete my account". - You will even receive email assuring you that two weeks later profile would be completely deleted. - Then, couple years later you'll occasionally seen email from facebook that someone tried to log in into your ("permanently deleted") account. - You'll…

This is a bit hyperbolic, and a little unbelievable. Is it possible that you experienced a bug in Facebook? Or that someone else had access to your account, which prevented the deletion? You've essentially asserted that you've caught Facebook lying about the account deletion process, while not showing us any proof outside of your comment.

Not located in US/UK/Europe, however my deleted account is fully deleted. Can't even 'reset' the password on it since there's no email found when I try to use the reset.

I don't like Facebook, but I don't think there's a point in getting riled up by one person's comment on HackerNews. It reminds me of the thread where someone was claiming they were under surveillance for using ProtonMail.

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#247

Post by asdff » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

shadowfaxRodeo wrote: post #15

I got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago. Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp really think you’re weird for not having it. Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent. If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, si…

Do you live outside the US? I always hear how popular WhatsApp is on here but honestly I don't know a single person who uses that app in the US. Or any chat platform for that matter. Everyone just texts and calls at least in my younger millenial circle. I guess in other countries they still charge for texts and calls like its 2002 and maybe WhatsApp is more popular there to get around paying for each text message?

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#248

Post by asdff » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

red_trumpet wrote: post #57

shadowfaxRodeo wrote: post #15

I got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago. Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp really think you’re weird for not having it. Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent. If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, si…

I mostly agree with your comment, having deleted WhatsApp myself this spring. However I have a problem with that. > many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent Did you not use the same network effect to get people to join Signal/Telegram? While I agree that Signal is morally better (being a non-profit and all), it is still a closed garden, which makes such net…

IRC never went anywhere, you aren't stuck.

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#249

Post by asdff » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

treesknees wrote: post #218

jasode wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t have a Facebook account, so possibly all the positive discussion is on Facebook itself and I’m not seeing it. We don't like to admit it but the HN demographic is a self-reinforcing "filter bubble" on some topics such as Facebook, Uber, Apple. Outside of HN, almost all non-techies I interact with don't complain about them. I remember seeing a lady's gardening channel on Youtube and wondered how she got so man…

Outside of our bubble I don't see complaints about the company itself, but complaints about the product and content. It seems nobody is very happy with Facebook. I have family members who will always agree that Facebook is full of uninformed opinions and everyone always seems to be disagreeing/arguing and it's full of complaining and political posts. And yet people continue to use it.

> And yet people continue to use it.

In my experience the people complaining about the junk content on facebook have checked out from using facebook very much years ago. Among my millenial peers at least engagement across all social networks has dropped like a stone. FB just exists to dump wedding photos now.

Re: How to permanently delete your Facebook account

#250

Post by kelnos » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

swamp-agr wrote: post #47

The situation is quite interesting here. - Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. - Formally, it's possible to proceed with "Permanently delete my account". - You will even receive email assuring you that two weeks later profile would be completely deleted. - Then, couple years later you'll occasionally seen email from facebook that someone tried to log in into your ("permanently deleted") account. - You'll…

I do wonder if manually deleting everything: every post, every photo, every comment, every interaction, will actually delete things behind the scenes, or if FB keeps everything regardless.