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Comment by rooshdi | Hacker News Reader

I too wonder why Facebook makes it so difficult for users to permanently delete their accounts? It should be a straight forward and simple process, yet Facebook doesn't even make this option easily locatable through their service. They should at least openly explain to their users why the deletion process is in its current form (user experience, security, spam reasons, etc). However, making the deletion process so isolated and obscure, without an official explanation, only makes me more skeptical of Facebook's agenda.

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The value of a network increases as the square of its nodes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfs_Law

The value of a network to a user is in the number of people he can communicate with. The value of a network to Facebook is in the number of accounts it can claim; the more accounts, the more attractive is the network to advertisers.

If Facebook reports number of users to advertisers and investors, it would never want to be in a situation where they have to show a loss of users. So they make it obscure to delete your account.

/speculation

Yes, I can understand why it would be in Facebook's best interest, but what about their users' self interest? They are the ones who made them who they are today.

It's probably more like n log( n ) (see: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is...) and your point is valid either way.

If you delete your account, they'll have one less user. Why would they want that?

Anyway, I'm sure any deletion is a soft delete. They still keep your data so they can paw over it and sell it to people.

Agreed. The article states permanence, but who's to say they're not actually pulling the curtain on you and keeping your information on file? I think the bottom line is, if one is not comfortable with the sharing of information, don't sign up in the first place and consider the repercussions of your actions before making anything public if what you might do would later concern you... in that sense similar to getting a tattoo.

Maybe to prevent deletion on impulse?

Or by a prankster with temporary access/credentials.

An email is sent to the user to notify them that their account has been queue'd for deletion - after that it takes 14 days for the deletion to happen, during which time a simple login will cancel the deletion request. So I doubt it's about pranksters. These other controls seem adequate to prevent that type of thing.

The worst case is when someone gets temporary access to your EMAIL credentials. They do a "forgot password" on Facebook, delete your account, then delete the confirmation email. Of course, someone with access to your email can do far worse things than delete your Facebook account.

A million years ago we used to do that to our friends ICQ account.... it got to the point where he started keeping seperate list of all the skanks he was chatting up.

That explanation would be too selfish on Facebook's part and incredibly disrespectful to their users from a privacy and information control standpoint, but who knows, it may be the unfortunate truth.

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