February 15th, 2010 by 
Last night, when I got home from work, the very first thing I did was to turn my computer on and check Facebook.
It was at this very moment, after reading another invitation to join another stupid group, another Farmville pig sharing request, another invite to an event taking place tomorrow in another hemisphere… I felt like a huge urge to put an end to my facebook life… forever.
Why would I delete my profile?
They are actually lots of reason not to like Facebook. There’s even a Wikipedia page listing criticisms of Facebook. I think the biggest concern has been the change in policy, beginning with the fact that users have to accept Facebook T&Cs and “grant [the site] an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, […] any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service”
Every change Facebook has made to their privacy settings has been followed up with official disclaimers to fight back fake rumours about users’ content. Fears and hoax claims are surely coming from real facts and I would recommend any Facebook user to read both their privacy settings (and all the small print) and this very enlightening interview with an anonymous Facebook employee.
How did I delete my Facebook profile?
Very good question indeed: As pointed out in Michael Gracie’s article, it’s a piece of cake to get rid of your MySpace account (apart from bands, who’s still using MySpace nowadays?): you can easily find the link and after following a couple of verification steps, your account, and any track of your presence on the site, are deleted. However, it’s a mission to delete your Facebook profile.
There is a deactivation link in your settings pages, but it’s impossible to find the actual deletion command on the site. The magic link exists though, but it’s usually found on third party websites or via google.
As Gracie comments, all through the deletion process, Facebook’s tone is rather apprehensive and they seem rather reluctant to let you put your profile down in a definitive way.
“Facebook communication makes them sound apprehensive about deleting your information. They may claim that this is for your own protection, but I consider the sequence and tone more that of one that wants to carefully review you
r information first, just in case there is something of value to them within.”
Considering a suicide 2.0?
Entrepreneurs saw there was an opportunity to build a new offer around this trend: for example the Web 2.0. Suicide Machine. The Netherlands based start-up is offering a clean and complete social network suicide: they promise to do all the manual dirty work to delete your presence on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn, thanks to a script that deletes all your “friendships”, comments, pictures and other user-generated content associated to your account.
201,766 friends have been unfriended and 337,044 tweets have been removed since launching.
2,769 people went before you!
The idea is good and, as you can see in the testimonial part of the site, lots of suicidal users have taken the step and deleted their accounts. However, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine had to suffer the consequences of their guerilla activity: Facebook sent them several warning and lawyer letters, stipulating that Web 2.0. Suicide Machine was illegal:
“Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely. Web 2.0 Suicide Machine collects log-in credentials and scrapes Facebook pages, which are violations of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. We’ve blocked the site’s access to Facebook, as is our policy for sites that violate our SRR. We’re currently investigating and considering whether to take further action.”
Having said that, and as described in this article from cnet.com, there is still that hidden link to get rid of your Facebook profile in a much more efficient way than that of the Web 2.0 Social Machine.
Failed suicide attempt?
At this stage, I must admit that I did delete my old account… to create a brand new one. Even if it didn’t convince me about the actual value of my Facebook relationships with the rest of the world, it was probably the most effective way to “cleanup” my online presence on the social networking site. They are actually few steps you can take to privacy-proof your profile.
Going further: In her last blog, Lucy weighed up the pros and cons between Twitter and Facebook. Is there a general saturation of socialisation on the internet? Are people as excited to know what their network (or “friends”) are doing in real time anymore? Did Gmail Buzz launch too late as people are now looking for slow-pace networking?
In the case of Facebook-overdose, login to your Facebook account, and break the emergency glass below:
https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
