Well it has now happened, I have deleted my @Facebook account (and yes I am aware how fitting it is for me to use facebook’s @twitter address!). There are a few factors which have driven me to this, some more basic than others. In recent weeks I realised that I was only using facebook for one purpose, and that was the events features. All I did was check if my friends were holding a party or a pub trip and then log off. One thing that I did notice each time that I logged in was the shear amount of rubbish that was in my news feed, why would I care if so and so only needed two more bricks to build their barn!! Add the fact that people were always bulk inviting me to their bands gig on the other side of the country and I got fed up!
The bigger issue of course is (or now was!) their stance on history, I really dont want every website I visit to know everything about me just because I happened to be logged into facebook at the time. There is also the issue regarding the “facebook-positive”, and yes I did just coin that term. On facebook (and for that matter any site which uses facebook) you can only “like” something, you can’t dislike it. As such with facebook’s iFrames (seariously iFrames in this day and age!), any website I visit is instantly “liked” and “liked” even more if I choose to click the “like” button.
So the process of actually deleting my account! A quick search of the internet gave me enough impotus to actually delete all my data before I even deleted my account! It appears that facebook does not actually delete your data when you close the account, it simply lies dormant on their servers. As such I removed all traces of my facebook life first:
Remove two Email addresses (having to type my password each time!)
- Set up a fake email and add it to FB allowing me to delete my other email address (another two password inputs!)
- Remove my Mobile Number.
- Remove all 37 applications that somehow had found their way into my profile.
- Trash the content of my profile page (including my picture!).
- Delete all my likes and dislikes (three clicks for each one!!).
- Remove my contact information.
- Delete my photo albums.
- Delete my links and notes.
I started the process at 15:30 and finished 63 minutes later, every action I took to delete something was slow, and many times facebook just crashed out and I had to login again. So not a quick fix.
The last few stages were easyier, however I did like the “please don’t leave us” page. It picked three friends and told me how much they would miss me, needless to say it didn’t stop me from leaving! Following that I got a simple captcha and another password request, I was amused to see the captcha text it was rather fitting.
Leaving Facebook Captcha
All in all leaving facebook wasn’t that hard, taking the extra precaution of removing all my data too a little longer but should be worth it.
Now I just need someone to re-create facebook’s events system via twitter and all will be sorted! Perhaps I could write it myself!
