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Facebook Lies

iain.learmonth.me

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Re: Facebook Lies

#91

Post by imustbeevil »

wpietri wrote: post #87
imustbeevil wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every email they send has an unsubscribe link and you don't click it, you're kind of losing the reasonable grounds to expect them to stop emailing you. I've done this before, just let myself keep getting emails and hoped they stopped. Then I just clicked all of the unsubscribe links they are legally required to put in every email, and I never got an email again. You don't have to hope for what you want, you can ac…

I understand that's the culture we've established. If a company has your address, it is currently acceptable for them to send you infinite electronic marketing nonsense in an attempt to manipulate you into being a profitable resource for them. My point is that it's not how it normally works with humans. If a person did this, it would be creepy and controlling. But when a group of people does it because it might make…

I apologize if it seems like I'm making a moral judgement.

I don't think it's any more ideal to have to opt out of communications, I'm merely saying that expecting not to have to opt out is a misjudgement.

I'd rather more closely understand reality than hope it gives me exactly what I want. Facebook does not owe me anything.

Re: Facebook Lies

#92

Post by megous »

I expected this, so I first deleted all posts, comments, events, whatever could be deleted, unfriended everyone, replaced everything that could not be removed with random strings, including my name and profile url, and then deleted the account.

Even if it gets reactivated, it will be useless.

It's annoying that this has to be done. There are several other well known companies that make account deletion a stupid hassle. Amazon for example should have already archived my account automatically after not being used for 7 years at all. Apple is another idiotic company that makes it hard to remove stuff from your account (you have to have a mac to disassociate credit card from your account, their web app doesn't allow it for no reason whatsoever (despite being able to add CC info there), only iTunes app on the mac can do it)

Companies should think more about account removals.

Re: Facebook Lies

#93

Post by Kequc »

vcanales wrote: post #60

I'm not trying to defend Facebook, but I used the 14-day deletion and it worked for me. Just saying that there must be more to this story than just "I did it and Facebook lied to me".

I deleted my account there 10 years ago, about a year ago I needed an account to join a memorial group for someone. Facebook somehow knew that the email address I used to sign up with, which was new, was related to my old email address and tried to link my new account to my old data which was still there.

It also still knew a heck of a lot about me including suggestions for people I had just recently met. And some of them I only met once, in passing, never exchanged info with, and never saw again.

Re: Facebook Lies

#94

Post by thg »

bmelton wrote: post #36
yeukhon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why that isn’t expected. Next time try deactivate it instead of uninstall the app, then there is an option to opt out communication. In your account settings, you can also opt out. I have not received a single email from facebook since then (although I am back on it again).

I did not expect them to ramp up the amount of notification spam 100-fold as I engage with the service less. I've no intention of logging back in to check my notification settings, but when I was using Facebook, I would get a push notification maybe once or twice every couple of days. Now, I get more than a dozen SMS messages a day. I've built notification systems in the past, and in every instance, respecting the fa…

> I've built notification systems in the past, and in every instance, respecting the fact that abusing the notification power entrusted to us by our customers was seen as a cardinal sin.

The keyword in your sentence is customers. The people using Facebook aren't its customers, they're the product and thus open season for all kinds of nefarious things you'd never do to your customers.

Re: Facebook Lies

#95

Post by r00fus »

komon wrote: post #81
imustbeevil wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a weird thing to think. You can turn off all notifications and they'll never contact you, ever. I stopped using Facebook 6 years ago and haven't gotten a single email / sms from them since then, because I used the settings properly. Yeah, if you just ghost them and never click "update your email settings" at the bottom of every email they send, they'll keep sending them.

Anecdote incoming: I've turned off every notification setting possible on my Facebook account. The issue is that every time they add a new notification "feature" it seems like they flip all of them back on again. All as if to say, "Everybody wants a daily/weekly rollup of what happened on Facebook! Subscribe everybody by default!" So I feel the GP's pain, I've taken to marking them as spam as well because I know that…

The growth hacker mentality was cute when FB was a scrappy little startup. Now they're dominant, it's just creepy.

Re: Facebook Lies

#96

Post by brownell »

mikeash wrote: post #28
adrianratnapala wrote: post #5

Well when I "deleted" my account years ago, Facebook made it absolutely clear that it was really only deactiviating the thing and that it would retain its records. Nonetheless, as far as any of my friends can tell, I am no longer on Facebook at all. So maybe the author of this post removed his account at an earlier period when Facebook didn't make such an honest claim. In that case the title should be "Facebook used…

The help page about deactivating or deleting (they are two separate actions) makes it quite clear that your data will be gone , not merely rendered inaccessible, when you delete: https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368 That page uses the phrase "permanently delete[d]" multiple times, says there's "no option for recovery," and calls out some information they do keep because it's not actually part of your count,…

Did you even read the comment you replied to?

Years ago they did not delete accounts. They would deactivate it and never delete the data. They do now (apparently), but in the past they were very openly not deleting anything.

Re: Facebook Lies

#97

Post by seizethecheese »

megous wrote: post #92

I expected this, so I first deleted all posts, comments, events, whatever could be deleted, unfriended everyone, replaced everything that could not be removed with random strings, including my name and profile url, and then deleted the account. Even if it gets reactivated, it will be useless. It's annoying that this has to be done. There are several other well known companies that make account deletion a stupid hassl…

This would actually be a cool product. Could call it Facebook Discombobulator.

Re: Facebook Lies

#98

Post by Karunamon »

lkrubner wrote: post #59
imustbeevil wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a weird thing to think. You can turn off all notifications and they'll never contact you, ever. I stopped using Facebook 6 years ago and haven't gotten a single email / sms from them since then, because I used the settings properly. Yeah, if you just ghost them and never click "update your email settings" at the bottom of every email they send, they'll keep sending them.

An earlier story: "Facebook activated my dormant account and it won’t let me deactivate it" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13965134

The story there is an incredibly uncharitable reading of what actually happened. It appears as if the author's password was guessed and the account was reactivated. When he went to dispute this as account theft, they demanded ID to prove ownership.

That doesn't strike me as particularly unreasonable, rather projection of ill will onto Facebook. They have no way of knowing which person is actually the account owner, actual ID would definitively settle the matter.

Re: Facebook Lies

#99

Post by epicide »

dahart wrote: post #71
cowsandmilk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's weird to expect that deleting your account will result in the account being deleted and notifications for the account you no longer have to go away? But the person above just stopped using their account, didn't delete it (or disable it, which is what facebook sends you on the path towards), so that is why the notifications continued. They still had an active account, just hadn't logged in for some time.

Yes, but the person above only had an account to stop using because Facebook wouldn't delete it when asked, similar to the OP's post. Reasonable / normal expectation is that notifications should have stopped the first time.

Regardless of account deletion attempts, they knew they had an active account and didn't change any notification settings. They still expected Facebook to magically know to stop sending them notifications. That is weird.

Re: Facebook Lies

#100

Post by giancarlostoro »

wiredfool wrote: post #89
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had notifications disabled for at least a year and have never had this happen.

They're probably A/B testing it, and you're the control group.

Or resetting those settings to try to get back some high earning users. Ignoring those they don't profit from.
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