

Ask HN:  How to gracefully exit Facebook? - forkandwait

As we left the Social Network movie last night, we hadn't even made it to the car when the wife said "Well, FB has crested."  I would like to take down my page and get out, but I don't want to just disappear.<p>Has anyone here made a graceful Facebook exit?  What did you do?  What did you wish you had done?
======
w1ntermute
Do you have to completely delete your account right away? Why don't you try
gradually reducing your Facebook presence by following these steps:

1\. Stop posting any content yourself. Stop using/playing all apps/games. If
you need to contact someone, do it via phone, email, or some other non-
Facebook medium. Disable Facebook chat so they can't message you on there, and
reply to their messages/wall posts in person or over the phone (replying with
another internet-based medium might raise some red flags, but using an
entirely different form of communication won't).

2\. Delete content you've posted in the past. Remove apps/games you have
installed and remove yourself from the groups you're in. Remove information
from your profile. Untag yourself from pictures others have posted.

3\. Delete friends that you haven't talked to in a long time.

4\. Contact your remaining friends and give them your contact info.

5\. Delete your account.

~~~
djacobs
I did this 6 months ago. I'm still alive and social. This is the five-step
program, folks.

------
wccrawford
My friends already had my contact info. They're my friends, after all.

So I just told them all I was leaving, deleted every post and picture, and
removed every friend-link.

It isn't really that hard.

~~~
forkandwait
It's more the outer circle of friends that I am concerned about; the close
friends already know I am not a facebook person anymore.

~~~
FlemishBeeCycle
Does your outer circle of friends have an expectation of a certain level of
knowledge about your life? Would it be considered rude of you to remove all
your information and leave a note (in your information) simply saying "I no
longer use Facebook, please contact me via email"?

------
sqrt17
In Germany, StudiVZ (a German facebook clone) was quite notorious for being
privacy-challenged, to the point where people started calling it StasiVZ
(after the former secret police of the GDR).

What happened was that people removed all identifying information from their
profiles and changed their names to something that was not recognizable for
anyone to search (i.e., either you had them already in the contact list, or
you couldn't find their profile without asking them).

AFAIK, Facebook wants you to have your real name on your profile (as per TOS),
but a friend with a stalker problem didn't have any problem to get it set to
something non-namelike.

IMO, a combination of a non-searchable name and restricted privacy settings
for things like "who can tag you in pictures" and "who can see my posts"
should solve the bulk of the issue.

Extra points for blocking third-party inclusion of facebook.com scripts or
images in your ad blocker (which also blocks the "sign in via facebook"
javascript code, like-buttons etc. - these are probably the biggest privacy
issues outside facebook itself).

------
cschep
I "parked" my profile for a month and it really helped break my manic feelings
of checking it all the time, then stopping for three days out of guilt, etc.

Ultimately those are the feelings I'm trying to rid myself of, but there are
pros to having it around. After a month off, I barely cared to login, but I'm
glad it still exists for the random PM or funny news feed. I'm back to
checking it every couple of days and I'm happy I didn't delete all my friends,
etc.

Your experience may vary though, I doubt most people noticed I was gone.

~~~
stretchwithme
I did. Missed you, buddy.

What was your name again?

------
tlrobinson
I feel like this is just another thinly disguised "Look at me, I'm deleting
Facebook!" post. Do you really need our advice on how to remove yourself from
a website? Just delete it, or delete all your data.

------
jsz0
Just delete the account and move on. If you attempt to make a "Why I'm too
cool/smart to use Facebook anymore" sort of post you're just going to come off
as an elitist.

~~~
bonzoesc
If you're on Hacker News, you probably are.

------
theprodigy
I have facebook and don't really care for my account I am too busy to use
facebook and don't have time to read about my friends status updates.

Honestly if you are a serious business man you don't have time for facebook.

------
shortformblog
I think while you're definitely free to leave, just keep in mind that the
movie is very exaggerated and the truth is really not anywhere as bad as it
seems. I think Lawrence Lessig had some great commentary on this the other
day:

[http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/78081/sorkin-
zucke...](http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/78081/sorkin-zuckerberg-
the-social-network)

Aaron Sorkin is a great writer, but he's writing for dramatic effect, not
truth. Don't let the film factor in to your escape.

~~~
skinnymuch
I just skimmed the article and saw Lessig say he thought the three UConnect
people didn't deserve anything and that they were being ridiculous along with
our system that is awarding them money.

The UConnect guys were led on for two months. Then they see Zuckerberg release
thefacebook.com with the main feature they had - exclusivity because of
college. I don't see how that doesn't warrant something in the range of 1% of
Facebook. Don't get me wrong though, I don't think any of the UConnect guys
would've done anything with UConnect on their own, but in these circumstances
they do seem to deserve the settlement.

------
kyro
Many of the 'friends' you have on Facebook are anything but. They're all
superficial and mainly virtual relationships you have with others you will
most likely never meet let alone contact offline. I quit Facebook several
months ago and haven't felt a thing. You'll soon realize that those you really
cared for and whose relationships mean anything were those who you already
kept in contact with outside of the service. I didn't bother leaving a going
away message. Unless your friends are part of very small circles, your absence
will go unnoticed. Facebook is great at making people think they're getting a
lot more attention than they really are, and so people tend to think that
leaving will create a void that friends will cry over. While the reason to
quit here isn't really a valid one, I really would recommend deleting your
Facebook page to anyone, unless the survival of your circle depends on it or
you need it for familial purposes. It's a huge time sink and for something so
shallow.

In short, if you really want to leave, just do it. Don't bother with being
graceful; no one will notice or care for more than a minute.

~~~
commandar
>Many of the 'friends' you have on Facebook are anything but. They're all
superficial and mainly virtual relationships you have with others you will
most likely never meet let alone contact offline.

Seriously? I have in the ballpark of 180 friends on Facebook, and maybe a
dozen of those are people I haven't met in person. The vast majority are
either friends from real life or people from my social circle I interact with
occasionally anyway. Then again, I've always treated Facebook as a fairly
personal medium, and I don't friend people I don't know or don't like.

I mean, yeah, if you treat Facebook friends like pokemon, it's not going to
have a lot of value for you, but if you abuse _any_ social tool, it's not
going to have a lot of value for you.

Earlier today, I found out that an old friend of mine that I grew up with is
going to be in town in a couple of weeks and made plans to grab lunch while
he's here. I haven't seen him in 7 or 8 years. Things like that are incredibly
cool to me, and the entire reason I use social networking sites. They
facilitate me interacting with people I care about; they're not a substitution
for actual interaction, but they make it possible in the first place.

------
andjones
Facebook is an excellent tool, despite its many privacy concerns.

I hear people talking about leaving facebook entirely and that seems a bit
short-sighted and draconian in measure. Little do I hear discussed changing
the way that we use Facebook.

Last month, I went from 250+ friends to 40. Instead of using Facebook as a
mean to accumulate every acquaintance I've ever made, I decided to only keep
the friends to which I am close and comfortable sharing parts of my life. I
changed most of my privacy settings to the most restrictive possible.

Yes, Facebook may change its privacy settings again. If the privacy becomes
such an issue to warrant me leaving, I will leave. However, keeping up with
the privacy changes and settings is a price I am willing to pay. Facebook is
not free.

Being an entrepreneur, I do want an easy way to announce things I do. I want a
way to keep in touch with those closest to me. That number of people is 40
right now, and still seems a bit high. Still, since I have cut most of my
friends I have found myself more open and willing to use Facebook.

------
zmmmmm
I haven't deleted my account, but I just post status & a message board message
saying I don't log in often and where to contact me - which is my web page.
You could just leave an email address there.

For me, Facebook is a giant phone book. It is a way to look people up and for
people to find you. I like it for that, beyond that - email me.

------
code_duck
It seems pretty simple. Just put your desired contact info in your FB profile,
stop going there, and stay logged out.

------
rblion
I deleted my account. They still store your data and your photos on their
server for 14 days. They say 'in case you reactivate it'. Just tell your CORE
friends/family you are leaving for greener pastures. Just leave a status for
everyone else, if they care, they care. If they don't, who cares.

------
MK5
I try to keep only 50 friends max. I use to have like 300+ friends which was
totally useless and definitely not good for me because I was always checking
every pages, answering comments, chatting etc. but I wasn't "that" connected
to my true friends.

------
ziadbc
Just as Google has gone into markets that are far beyond search engines (like
phones), Facebook will. I think there is a high likelyhood that five years
from now people will look back at this time and realize now was just the
beginning for Facebook.

~~~
vaksel
yeah agreed, they have a subscriber base of 500 million. there are plenty of
ways to monetize that with products.

i.e. the rumored facebook phone

------
slouch
it's easy.

post "i'm deleting my facebook account"

deactivate your account

stop using it for 14 days

you're gone.

------
barrkel
I rarely visit the Facebook site, and only then via a different browser than
my main browser, which isn't logged in to Facebook, so it doesn't have the
cookies etc. It is also ad-blocking the Facebook domains.

To get notified of interesting things happening, I subscribe to Facebook RSS
feeds. JWZ made a listing of some of them here:
<http://jwz.livejournal.com/1144527.html> About the only thing it doesn't
include is photo updates.

With this setup, I visit Facebook perhaps once a week.

------
shadowsun7
Do you have a website? If you do, this would be a lot easier. If not - well
you can always message everyone a copy of your email address one week before
you disappear.

In my experience it's not that hard to get out of Facebook - the friends who
do want to find you will either Google for you or ask people they know are
your friends for contact information. And that's for the really urgent stuff.
Just make sure you have a Google-able presence (maybe a Google profile?), an
email that's easy to find and you're good to go.

Good luck with the move! :)

------
thought_alarm
Tell your actual friends you're leaving Facebook.

As for your "Facebook Friends", remove all of your content, lock down your
privacy settings, and leave a note on your profile page that says the account
is no longer being used. That way, when people find you on Facebook they will
know what's going on.

------
fs111
Just delete your account, done.

Real friends will contact you anyway. You might miss a few stupid pictures or
something, but you can spent your time with more useful things anyway. It is
no big deal, delete your account and forget about it. One time sucker less. It
is really no big deal!

------
jdminhbg
Facebook is just kind of a shitty website. There's not much to making a
graceful exit -- I gave all my friends advance warning that I was deleting my
account, and then did so. For the vast majority of people, anyone you want to
talk to has ways of doing so outside of FB.

------
tvon
I think my favorite departure comes from Half Baked: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck
you, you're cool, and fuck you, I'm out!"

That said, you can keep an account without ever visiting the site, for those
not-that-close friends.

------
malbiniak
i'd like to understand the thinking behind "fb has crested" and wanting to
take down your page and get out. i haven't seen the movie, so maybe i'm
missing something.

to the point of still being findable, use <http://about.me> or
<http://extendr.com/> to avoid disappearing.

and strangely enough, the SERP for "matt albiniak" on DDG has twitter first,
linkedin second, and facebook third.

------
lhnz
You can't fully leave Facebook. People can still tag you on photos they take
even when you don't have an account. (Just a text tag, but it could still be
incriminating...)

~~~
tkeller
But this is true even if you never had an account. That's like saying you
can't leave the internet, because people can still talk about you online.

~~~
lhnz
True. But I guess as a social utility the internet and facebook are more
evasive than people assume. I think, facebook more so, because if you know
anybody that uses it, you lose more 'privacy'.

------
aneth
Who cares if fb has "crested?" If you have some reason of privacy, I can
understand, however just deleting your account because it's not the cool thing
anymore seems rather petty. Clearly if it's how your friends find you, it
still serves a function in your life. Delete your friendster account, yes. I
don't understand this compulsion to leave facebook.

~~~
forkandwait
I don't care that it has crested (though it has) -- I care about the privacy
concerns, and I don't want my high school friends finding my dad and my
current grad school social circle all on the same page (yuck!).

~~~
iamwil
Start removing friends. I do it every once in a while.

If you no longer want to be in the lives of your high school friends or vice
versa, even online, cut the cord. You'll find that people are usually
apathetic and none the wiser.

------
lzw
Working on it. My suggestion is send your friends some contact info, like
email address and or phone number (depending on whether they are really
friends) and let them know you're shutting down your facebook account. Don't
really need to give any explanation, just say you're closing it down. If
pressed, maybe just say it is a distraction, or whatever.

Facebook won't actually close your account, though. That's the hard part. You
have to go thru and delete all your information manually. IF you look on your
feed / wall, you can see everything you've done, and you can go and click on
it, and delete it. It is a long slow tedious process, and it takes me about 2
hours to do a year.

The normal "cancel my facebook account" procedure that facebook does is to
just suspend your account. IT is all there and if you ever log in again, it
comes right back. While it is suspended you won't show up on your friends
lists, etc, but all your activity is still there.

This makes it really easy & tempting--in the days where just about every
webpage has a facebook like button that if you accidentally press will cause
you to see the facebook login screen-- to bring your account back.

I went around and around with them over a year ago about this, and their
policy is that there is no such thing as "canceling" a facebook account. They
keep it ready and waiting for you "for when you want to come back." Thus they
will only allow you to "suspend" it. (this policy may have changed given all
the high profile facebook quitting in the last year.)

I'm deleting all of the info, when that is done, I'm going to change the real
name on the account to asdsrqwer sadfvcawer and then the password to something
random and then "Suspend it".

~~~
aj
You could try the Web 2.0 suicide machine. It automates what you are trying
to..

<http://www.suicidemachine.org>

~~~
aj
That is when it works and is up...

