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Comment by saddlerustle | Hacker News Reader

> Tried to delete FB, ig or WA account completely? Every imaginable Ui obstruction and retention trick will bother you on the way out.

Deleting WhatsApp is Settings -> Account -> Delete My Account -> Delete My Account

Deleting Facebook is Settings -> Account Ownership -> Deactivation and Deletion -> Delete Account (With a very clear choice between deactivation and permanent deletion) -> Delete Account

Compare that to unsubscribing from the New York Times...

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Not sure they still do this, but when I deleted my Facebook account (some years ago) there were numerous dark patterns designed to get me to relent, including at one point showing me pictures of some of my friends and saying "Are you sure you want to do this? <person's name> will miss you" etc. It was incredibly manipulative.

Except that's not really what happens with Facebook. I deleted my account there ages ago, and discovered later when checking haveibeenpwned.com that the email address I used there was part of a data dump from Facebook. So, do I believe that FB really delete your data when you request to permanently delete it? Nope, not in the slightest.

The last published DPC audit found that it does [1]. There's really no reason to subject themselves to huge fines and lie about it, a very small fraction of facebook users delete anything.

The "data dump" you're referring to was probably scraped from public facebook pages before you deleted the account. There has never to my knowledge been a case of private data becoming public that was exfiltrated from facebook proper.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20171218060100/https://www.datap...

I know of two instances:

1) Facebook had a "View as" bug that allowed anyone to view anyone else's private page as that person.

2) Cambridge Analytica in which Facebook shared private information with third-parties under an NDA.

As I recall, the 'View As' was a feature, allowing you to see your own profile and posts as would be seen by another person, so you could make sure your post privacy/visibility settings were set up the way you wanted. I used the feature quite often and was quite annoyed when they disappeared it one day. Do you have more info on this?

Here's some info on the View As bug posted by Facebook:

https://about.fb.com/news/2018/09/security-update/

Facebook have (had?) this clause of "if you reconnect in the following 30 days the account deletion will be cancelled" instead of deleting it immediately. Which is indeed one of the trick mentioned by GP.

It is true that subscription s and re occuring payments are much worse, but we are talking "freeware" here. Especially IG you have to do in the browser.

You still have to make a literal phone call to unsubscribe from WSJ.

If you buy thru Apple you can cancel NYT with a button press at least

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