Deleting Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Deleting Facebook

feld.com

41 pointsallenleee25 comments

Summary: Guy that didn't use Facebook much deleted his Facebook account.

Deleting facebook is like saying bye to older contact or classmates. Most will not make it through the refriend on new social media platform stage. It is likely this will be the last time you ever have a chance to connect with this person.

Or google them or connect on linked in or send them an email.

Wait, you don't have their email? You've not sent them an email in 1/5/10 years? Why would you need to connect in the next 1/5/10 years?

Seriously though, if you really need to connect with someone and they are on the internet, google can help you find them.

You will miss out on serendipitous interaction with loose connections, and that is a real concern. However, the signal to noise ratio of my feeds was so low that such interaction rarely happened anyway.

Until the next things pops up. I remember people saying the same about Myspace and Hyves (the very definition of social media in the Netherlands a decade ago) and even MSN before that.

With each reincarnation you always lose a few. Well I have. There's always some fragmentation of which network people end up on next or some stick with the old one far longer than most.

I do not interact with my "friends" on social media at all. Call, SMS, WhatsApp, and hangout once in a while are the ways we remain in touch.

It's the "acquaintances" who used to wish me "HBD <inset smiley>" once a year on social media (on Fb usually; almost all of them used to wish - just those 2-3 words) and when I made my birthday private that too stopped. Later I deleted my Fb account altogether. And I don't miss any of that really.

I still get many birthday wishes. Those are from the people who have been wishing me since I was in school, college, and a couple from work. They are the ones who remember that date (maybe have added in their contacts). But they wish and they want to celebrate that day by meeting and hanging out somewhere and we do that. PS: Well, how I myself feel about birthdays is another matter altogether.

Point is, there's no merit in this kind of FOMO.

Yep. People are quick to raise the "well if you can't talk to them without Facebook they aren't real friends" argument but fail to realize it is entirely normal to have acquaintances or relationships with people without them being your close friends, at least for those in the younger age groups (20s?). I'm actually not on Facebook but that was a big downside of leaving the platform when I did (i.e. when people my age actually used it).

Will you ever actually talk to these people? I have lots of these people in my contacts list who I once knew but haven't spoken to in ages. I have never once randomly messaged one of them.

I went through my entire "friend list" and added people into a spreadsheet with their phone number or email address if I cared to keep contact.

Had a long "deactivated" period to figure out which services I had accidentally used facebook for authenticating with.

Now I go through my phone book and text/call someone if I want to see them and email pictures to my mom and extended family.

Bring over whoever you actually contacted within the previous two years (or some other rule of thumb)?

I once told my bookie to delete my account. He said he can't remove it from the db but he can try his best to not accept any wagers from the account. I've since wagered 100 + times that conversation. Maybe fb is the same. Maybe they know sooner or later, some how either through curiosity or some stupid link you click on, you'll be back?

It's the same way you can't delete your World of Warcraft account, only 'de-activate' it. They know you'll be back.

(Of course you can do things like trash all your gear, then delete all your characters, but unless you do that the temptation will always be there...)

Thats illegal since the GDPR.

Well, in Europe maybe. And only if a game character and items in their game count as your data. (IIRC there was actually something in the license agreement about all characters remaining property of Blizzard.)

The GDPR is about personal information. That is your name, address, email, IP address that you used to connect with, etc.

So yes, they can keep your character, but they have to delete anything that can link that character to you.

Doesn't FB have shadow accounts/profiles even of people not on FB? I seem to remember when I created my account it already suggested all sorts of people for me to connect with.

In which case...what is deletion?

Suspension of write access via the web to a node in the graph?

I wonder how deleting Facebook works with regards to shadow accounts - do they still store you in some DB as a shadow person just by being associated with somebody still using FB?

Yes they do.

People with huge networks like Brad leaving FB matters. A hub with many spokes leaves the network and influences others to leave, rinse, repeat.

I’m not sure it matters too much. A user can only have an absolute maximum of 5000 friends and most people don’t ever reach that, including famous people. Networks like Twitter and Instagram which are focused on asymmetric “following” rather than friending have a lot more to lose when a “hub” leaves.

Honestly, I don't really understand why we are getting posts like this one. People don't post 'How I deleted my Github account', right?

So what's the big deal? Is it some kind of accomplishment and people expect praise?

UPD: I mean, if you are not using FB anymore (like me), then does it really matter if you delete it or not? If you actually do use it, then why delete it?

I have too many customer relationships on Facebook. It's my own fault for creating a Users Group for our software on Facebook.

If it wasn't for that, I would delete my account.

Should move that group to something off-network sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you never know when the rug gets pulled out by Facebook.

Agreed.

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