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Comment by worldsayshi | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if when most people say they "quit" Facebook they removed their account or if they just stopped using it. It feels like most people I know has stopped using it, except for messenger, but almost no-one has actually removed or closed down their account.

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I did a full closure of my account. I have not received any emails in about 18 months, when I closed it. I'm scared to even attempt to login to verify that it is actually closed, for fear that FB will somehow interpret that as a desire for the account to reopen, and do so, despite that I did close it fully (and did not merely "deactivate" it or whatever they call the other option that does not really close it).

You're lucky. I deactivated back in January and I think I did a "log in with facebook" button once and now facebook seems to have re-activated my account implicitly.

Also they send me click-baity emails like "John Doe has posted a status update!"

Heck, they've even started TEXTING me to lure me back.

I'm dreading having to log back in to try to figure out how to get them to stop trying to contact me.

You say “deactivate“ but Facebook does differentiate between deactivation and actual closing of an account. So if you merely deactivated it, then that would explain why your account was not actually deleted and it reactivated it for you.

> The biggest difference between deactivating and deleting a Facebook account is that deactivating your Facebook account gives you the flexibility to return whenever you wish, while deleting your account is a permanent action.

From what I remember, reactivation of a deactivated account merely requires logging back in. Which sounds like you did exactly that.

I wonder if deactivating, deleting etc means different things depending on local laws. Like I would expect them to have to allow full deletion in EU?

They do allow full deletion everywhere. But you must explicitly select it. If you choose to “deactivate” that is not actually closing the account. It is a dark pattern.

I went through the process to delete my account but I still get emails from facebook occasionally about the account that they "deleted". I don't think it is possible to delete a facebook account.

I didn't close the account. Once in a blue moon (once in a quater) I'll need to look up some shitty business's only online presence on facebook or contact someone on messenger.

I did close mine completely, early this January, and have since only occasionally been affected when encountering businesses like the ones you describe. However, I view those occasions as a chance to push back against that bad trend, reminding them that there are people willing to give them money that they simply won't reach. While the push is small and they probably have already accounted for this loss in their strategies, I think it is better than nothing.

> reminding them

I hear you but I'm past that phase. "They" don't listen. It's not worth my time and energy being angry and going down that rabbit hole to "remind them" (my base anger level is high enough :P). Why? "They" don't have the capacity to listen. It's not in their interest to make their product better for you. You think you can't scroll back and see what you saw just a second ago because it's a really challenging technical problem? You think you can't set your home and work location in google Maps when you have location tracking disabled because it's a really complex problem?

No. They'll listen when they'll get their teeth kicked in by a regulator. I'm just glad that they consistently keep fucking up, even in the face of mounting negative sentiment.

I, for one, naturally lost interest and stopped using it many years ago and deleted completey last year, along with Instagram and many other social platforms.

You can "disable" the account and only messenger will still work. I've done that since my parents only use messenger.

Hmm, interesting. Not sure of the upside of that though? I assume that it wouldn't make much difference in how Facebook handles my data.

deactivating and/or closing your account just gives them more datapoints imo, and the number of people who do it is so small that it makes a great metric for fingerprinting.

I did close mine. But yeah it happens a lot.

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