Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters
wsj.com
wsj.com
Fun facts:
* They switch around button colors to trick you into undoing your actions
* They are very eager to log you back in if you, for example, try to access help. This reactivates your account.
* You cannot delete your account on Messenger. They removed the option. Deleting your Facebook profile does not delete your messenger account
* Their doc for deleting your messenger account lies/is out of date.
* There is no shortage of dark patterns in their account delete process.
I ended up manually deleting all my content, unliking everything, and deleting all my posts.
More fun facts: they don't show you all of your content. If you go back and try to clean up your account, do it multiple times. Keep doing it until Facebook can't find anything more to show you. I assume this is a technical optimization, but it means that there is no reliable to see everything you've posted (from the web UI).
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on...
"Delete my account" (dark blue), "Cancel" (light blue). "OK" (light blue; i.e. yes delete my account), "Cancel" (dark blue)
That were correct.
(Account now deleted.)
People who work there are con artists.
I'm surprised nobody has written a (thirdparty) browser plugin for that task yet.
This seems to reset your contacts and history. No idea what it looks like on the back end, assuming facebook is still rolling history associated with the number.
There used to also be a pathway to promote your messenger account to a full facebook account and then delete it that way, but it's been a while so not sure if that's still possible.
Not sure if you can pull of similar against email based accounts though.
Sounds like its worth waiting a month or two for when they fully implemented GPDR. That probably makes this way easier. (At least for EU residents)
Kudos to your hard work and perseverance though!
I'd like to not delete my Facebook account because my Spotify account is linked to it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/search?q=facebook&restrict_...
Problem is, I use Premium via a voucher from my ISP. My ISP no longer gives these vouchers, and its claimed. So for a new account, I cannot get Premium for "free".
I should feel lucky my ISP hasn't disabled the existing vouchers (the main branch of the ISP did).
I know it’s a different process, but wanted to reilluminate the some of the measures taken against disconnecting a service in general.
Once you do call, which I had to do for some older relatives recently, they invoke a high pressure sales pitch in the form of a question decision tree script.
The script requires the reps to start down the decision tree asking questions like, “Why are you disconnecting your service today?”, and then using that answer and others to slowly incent/coerce you into a corner intended to make you feel it would be an absurd decision to downgrade service.
I recorded the call (legal because they are recording it as well) to avoid misunderstandings about the precise details of what was being politely requested.
In response to every script question, I gave one simple answer. “Sir, why are you downgrading your service today?”. I reply, “It’s a secret”.
After a few seconds of hesitation, another question follows. “Is there anything you are not happy about with our service?”, “If we could save you more money than any other service would you be interested in hearing about it?”. Sorry, that’s also a secret.
Surprisingly, it short circuited the script pretty quickly without any social discomfort or feeling a need to justify myself. They allowed the changes to proceed, fully documented.
The worst is at the freakin' grocery store. If you have to go to the aisle with a cashier, they ask for your store-brand 'saver[slash-spyware] card'. If you tell them you don't have one it's usually followed by a "would you like to sign up..." "No, thank you." and then a "Can I have your phone number" at that point I'm annoyed. I am just trying to buy some Golden Grahams here lady you don't need my phone number, no I'm not giving you that.
I actually had one poor girl look at me like a lost puppy at this point. I don't think she'd ever had anyone decline before - and that scares the hell out of me. She had no idea what to do, the register wouldn't continue the transaction without inputting a phone number. After a few seconds of her staring at me bewildered I had to suggest she try just holding her finger down on the 1 key.
So for the last year, I've been typing in "Blue Apron" to google every couple of weeks, clicking on their paid ad, and skipping the next 5 weeks of deliveries. :)
Remember the agent is often required to record your disposition at the end of every contact, they can face consequences if they misuse buttons like "Answering Machine" and "Hang Up". So if they get ahold of you, they really want to get a reason out of you.
I called a few times to cancel, each time I hung up after 10 minutes. Finally I opted to leave a voicemail to get a call back. After a few days I finally got a call back and cancelled.
Service was terminated immediately. If they really wanted to protect you, you would give you a few more days for free and also confirm that you is 2FA so a burglar doesn't cancel your system without you knowing and then robbing you.
Yap I am with them and noticed that as well. Pretty annoying. But same as many gyms (some even require you to send a letter, a call is not even enough).
I am lucky there is Verizon Fios so every few years I call whichever service I have and scare them that I am switching to the competitor. So then they either give me a discount or I switch and get a discount.
However, partially removing or cancelling services online is expressly forbidden.
The first time, they didn't process the cancellation at all.
The second time, they delayed it two extra days so that they charged me another cycle.
Both times, I was routed to an offshore call center.
I nuked my facebook account a couple years back and I remember eye rolling at the number of steps. And then there was the waiting period where they’d keep my account around for some number of days or weeks just in case I decided to come back. Easier to buy a gun at a gun show than do something truly grave like get rid of a social media account.
I've been a dev for a few user facing products that stored customer created content and offered account deletion. These sites weren't specifically social, and I always thought offering a "we don't hard delete for N days" (with reasonably short N) was a user friendly option, in case of accidental deletion or realizing recovery of certain assets was needed. Would you have an issue with this if the rest of the process wasn't dark-patterened? (e.g. if it was a clear single button "Delete account, type account name to confirm, OK, your stuff is going to be hard gone in a week")
I'm curious as to where that line would be for you, since I usually consider well towards the "make options blatantly transparent and easy to use" and to the "allow users control of their account" side of things.
Actually, when compared to a breakup, the Facebook model seems even more silly:
"I just think this relationship isn't working, and that we should move on, and find someone who we'll be happy with."
"I'm really sorry you feel that way. I'll just continue being your boyfriend for the next week or two. If I hear from you at all during that time, I'll assume we're back together."
And specifically keeping a backup of my data prior to hard delete? On a continuum from worst to best:
Worst: Company as a matter of policy keeps my data around intentionally past the point of severing the relationship.
Forgivable: Technical architectural constraints mean that there might be some lag time before an "erase the tapes" process fully purges my data, with this limitation noted in the docs.
Best: Once I've terminated my relationship with the company, the company purges all my personal data.
It was late, I was tired and not paying attention. I've raised this with the service provider and they mentioned they plan to fix it.
They store backups for deleted items for 7 days.
This seems like a reasonable way of going about things.
I'm going to erase quite a few accounts I'm no longer using on various services, I really hope they won't cheat.
Do I have to issue the request from an IP-address believed to be under GDPR? Be a resident or citizen of an EU member state?
That way I can both get a backup of my images and have a reasonable chance of my data actually being deleted.
Also, what’s the process for proving that you are the legitimate owner of the record?
It's going to be very interesting to see what happens. Actual compliance I strongly suspect is going to depend on whether they enforce it - and actually levy a fine of 4% of total annual revenue against a significant company.
Apropos nothing, I remember reading an article a few years ago about how Facebook was using blue ray disks for long term storage.
Now if I was responsible for this thing, I would wait 6 months or so, and then tell all the Data Protection Authorities that their bonuses were directly linked to revenue from enforcement ... and sit back and watch the fun.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten#European...
[1] https://darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/roach-motel [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M
For all those FB users this is of course way too late, but maybe it will help some of you in the future with other services.
I've had some services where I've wound up in a standoff in an intercom session, with the requirement that I justify the deletion or go through troubleshooting and customer support before being blessed with the right to remove my own account.
ExpressVPN stands out particularly, the rep resorted to insulting me over my knowledge of data security when I justified the deletion based on the fact they could one day leak or be sold, so I'd prefer to terminate unused credentials.
Particularly strong pattern with VPN providers, Crypto exchanges, etc.
... which is cool, I guess.
I downloaded my data, which took about 20 minutes to accumulate, hit the delete button and had to confirm a second time with my password. Supposedly my account will be removed after 14 days of being deactivated. I had to be careful to remove all bookmarks etc to prevent any accidental logins resulting in the process being reversed.
Glad it’s gone, I don’t miss it. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for this type of thing on the internet.
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjo...
How do you engage with Facebook at all?
I'd wager that's a far less addictive way to use Facebook overall.
If someone logs into a separate service using their 'Facebook Login' will that reactivate their account if disabled/deleted (within 14 days)?
Has this been tested?
A lot of people have saved logins etc so might not realise if this does actually reactivate them...
They're buying ads that try to influence public opinion, about how they mishandled orgs buying ads that try to influence public opinion. :)
Hopefully GDPR will stop this.
Your fears are well founded, especially for anything that was public at some point in time. Also include email in that view.
Catch up with old friends over lunch sometime or write them an actual letter. You'll feel more connected having that kind of personal interaction than seeing snippets in a timeline.
As for events, if the people close to you don't think to invite you to things... Reevaluate your social life because something seems broken and it's not the lack of FB. People had perfectly healthy social lives before FB inserted itself.
PS: I didn't have to "delete" my account. I just never installed the app and don't ever log in. I flagged the updates as spam in my email and all is well.
Rename your old account to John Smith or something, change the password to sign everything out, delete it and then only re-sign into your new account (which you intend to barely/not use).
Nowadays I only use Facebook to reach family that don’t use Instagram and I keep my Instagram network private-only and small (<80). There is automatic cross-posting so it doesn’t cost me any effort in this regard.
1: in reality, it probably doesn’t ever go poof.
Use this link to delete hassle-free.
For non subscribers
Facebook was intending to match it up with user data it had collected, and help the hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment."
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/facebook-building-8-explored...
CalSTRS owned $650.4 million in FB shares at end of year 2017. I wonder if he experienced any of these technical problems when deleting his account.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/calstrs-cio-deletes-facebook...
Sandberg said she is having "reassuring conversations with advertisers, just as we are with people," about how Facebook has built privacy into its system.
[ This is very reassuring. ]
The company makes almost all its revenue and profit from advertising.
[ This too. ]
...
In a wide-ranging interview, Sandberg discussed the company's shifting responsibilities as it thinks about what can go wrong with its network, following the Cambridge Analytica revelations.
[ "Shifting responsibilities". Hmmm. ]
...
The company will also apply new European user-privacy rules globally, Sandberg said.
While the service may look different depending on the country, "the fundamental core principles of those settings and controls we are going to apply all over the world," she said. "Whether or not laws are passed."
[ Why does it need to "look different"? Less confusing that way I guess. ]
Separately, in an interview with Emily Chang of Bloomberg Television, Sandberg took the blame for not ensuring that Facebook's operations were staffed at the right level to protect users' privacy and for failing to look at security issues in total rather than dealing with specific problems as they arose.
"We also didn't build our operations fast enough, and that's on me," Sandberg said, explaining that the company will have 20,000 people working on security by year's end.
[ How brave to take the blame, considering the repercussions for this sort of negligence or carelessness with respect to privacy in the US are... nonexistent. ]
Source:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-05/facebook-...
[ Dont feel bad. You are doing a fantastic job! ]
"What we didn't do until recently and what we are doing now is just take a broader view looking to be more restrictive in ways data could be misused. We also didn't build our operations fast enough -- and that's on me," she added.
...
Sandberg addressed that comment as well, emphasizing that "all of that was public information."
...
"This is a forever process, because security is always an arms race," Sandberg said during an interview with Bloomberg.
[ No worries! Take as much time as you need. ]
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/facebook-coo-feels-deeply-pe...
The bracketed comments (so-called "commentary") are what drew the demerits I suspect, not the copy-paste. I apologise to anyone who was offended. No more sarcasm from me, and no more copy-paste, I promise.
Almost all other posts have gotten generous amounts of upvotes. None got downvotes.
HN has some ethical readers who are bolstering the faith I have in the future of the internet!
One post (the one about the story comparing FB to an engorged tick) got 98 upvotes.
Upvotes are an important variable on HN but they aren't sufficient to keep the site on track with its mandate. If they were, it wouldn't need moderation.
No, you people knew exactly what you were doing.
If those were all fresh accounts, it would have been detected as a voting ring.
None of this has anything to do with people being "touchy"[0]; we just want to keep comments that further discussion of the article at the top, and off-topic meta discussion out of the way.
[0] I really dislike characterization of most moderation actions with such emotionally-charged language. The vast majority of my downvotes involve little to no emotion at all.