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Comment by zalew | Hacker News Reader

I somehow fail to understand why people make quitting facebook a story.

https://www.google.com/search?q=why+i+quit+facebook About 45,000 results

https://www.google.com/search?q=i+deleted+my+facebook About 3,440,000 results

Does Facebook tell your "friends" that you have deleted your account when you leave? If not it seems like the sort of thing many people would want to announce somewhere.

Look up "Burger King Whopper Sacrifice" for the answer to that question.

While interesting, I'm not really sure how "de-friending" 10 people in order to get a mediocre hamburger has any relation to what happens when someone deletes their account.

From what I have seen it depends. I don't think it is ever announced that you leave. Sometimes you disappear from friend lists. Other times you remain but when someone tries to view your profile they get a message it doesn't exist. I think the reason they leave you in friends lists is because you can re-activate your account.

no it doesn't, posts just disappear from the wall, you disappear from friends, although there were some bugs and sometimes you appeared as an empty avatar in some lists, such as page admins, etc.

still it's not about announcing lack of a specific communication channel (most of 'friends' don't care anyway), as I glanced at a few of them it's more about making a scene (facebook would be a good place for that. zing!).

This is a little off topic, but I wish there were an option to see just comments with no photos or names so I could try to guess who is saying what.

I know, it doesn't have much utility, but it would be incredible.

If the facebook API gave us the comments in a post, we can make this an app.

I think so. I'm not sure, but when I deleted mine a while back I got texts from friends wondering if I was okay, or dead, or mad at them. So there was at least some way they figured out I was gone. It may have just been that they couldn't find me anymore, but the texts came in almost immediately after clicking the delete button.

It was kinda entertaining how so many people assumed that something major had to have happened for me to get rid of Facebook. Really it just started as a bet and then I never got back on.

No, but it's nice to mass-PM your friends before you do it so they won't think you unfriended them. I feel much better after deleting it, bottom line is it's just a piss poor means of communication and screws up more relationships than it creates.

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