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Way much easier: https://m.facebook.com/account/delete
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in 2004 during the first months of Facebook, I deleted my account. When I signed up again a few days later, everything was still there with profile picture and everything. [Updated: fix year FB was launched]
doubtful since it launched in 2004
How do we really know that this is actual deletion and not a deleted="true" in their databases? > It is inaccessible to other people using Facebook. The wording does sound very convincing but I really don't think we can just believe their word. After all it's Facebook.
It's not practical to perform a delete in some environments. It's certainly not practical to go through backup files and delete references in others. Everybody goes through a data recovery scenario at some point.
What you should expect is best effort. Nobody is going to re-train their neural networks that referenced your data. It's doubtful that any provider would delete what they have gleaned about you simply because you wanted your account removed.
Then there's the practicality of things. If you delete your account here on HN, would you expect all conversations that you participated in to be removed? All references to your comments? Or all comments that you made removed? Do you expect them to push that change out to google? Do you expect your references in access logs removed? There's always a trail.
Facebook isn't uniquely evil. They have the same problems as everyone else, and they have those problems at an incredible scale.
People think about these things as if they are files or entries in a simple SQL database that can simply be removed. They may use databases, but to think that all of your data exists in a singular database or that all of your data only exists in databases is simply not extrapolating what you know about technology to their environment.
If google were to remove a website from their index, how long would it take for all of their environments to no longer have a record of it? And would that actually be desirable? There aren't faceless drones working on these kinds of problems. There are very smart people and most of them have a conscience and care about end users. I don't think you would find that any large group of people at facebook, google, amazon, microsoft, or any of the big companies are completely apathetic to end user concerns. I'm sure plenty are far too busy to address individuals directly, but they certainly are not apathetic.
They suggest downloading a copy of your data first. How does one do that?
There's a one-click page to permanently delete your Facebook account here: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account
Last I checked, this doesn't permanently delete your account. You can still return with the same email and have all your old contacts (and post history, etc?).
[0] At least to all appearances. Of course, Facebook could secretly be keeping it, as is discussed elsewhere in this thread.
This might sound a little over the top and conspiracy theorist, but this is all part of Facebook's and rain man Zuckerberg's psychological warfare. Facebook hires people who work in the gambling industry to make their product more addictive. Zuckerberg is playing us all. Facebook is a major (if not number one) contributing factor to the polarization, narcissism, depression, constant outrage (both sides), and dividing of the US and frankly world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do we really know that this is actual deletion and not a deleted="true" in their databases? We don't know that. If you're feeling charitable you could believe they're being honest, but if you not then you just have to wonder. There is no way Facebook could prove they don't have a secret server with your data on it somewhere. Proving that would be impossible.
They could be explicit about exactly what they do with the data - that way there is some PR risk to them if they get caught out "recycle binning" data.
It may take up to 90 days to delete data stored in backup systems. Your info isn't accessible on Facebook during this time.
Copies of some material (example: log records) may remain in our database but are disassociated from personal identifiers.
The GDPR is a huge deal and absolutely no joke. This is part of the compliance for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula... It has the potential to completely change the way tech giants are able to provide their services. Each "purpose" that data is collected for must be individually consented, and it's prohibited for purposes to be withheld if others are not consented to. This allows a u…
I did not know they really had this as an option. I'm glad to hear it's available. I'd like to know how thorough they are with deleting you, however. With stories of "ghost" profiles that they build on individuals who don't have accounts (and/or are not logged in), I would be surprised if they actually delete everything they know about you.
Most of the big services whose stuff I've actually read have a clause somewhere in the ToS or privacy policy saying that "deleted" data is not necessarily deleted from all copies in their possession. I suspect the primary purpose of this is to allow them to have append-only or offline backups, since that's incompatible with users being able to reach in and nuke all their stuff.
I have not read the Facebook ToS since then; assuming that line remains the same, if they do not delete your data and you decide to sue, it's about whose lawyers cam make a better case for whether a reasonable amount of time has passed.