
Never Trust Facebook - mikecane
http://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/never-ever-trust-facebook/
======
lukejduncan
Facebook has value, but no matter what your privacy settings are set to, no
matter what you delete, always assume that anything you write or do on
Facebook - in any context - will be embarrassingly public. 1) Because it will
and 2) because it just makes life easier.

When my wife and I were first dating, for religious and cultural reasons her
parents didn't know. Her parents are conservative Muslims and mine
conservative Christians. She had a picture of the two of us as her profile
picture, and it was set to private (that existed once). More importantly in
the picture she wasn't wearing the hijab (the head scarf).

One day Facebook removed the ability to have private profile pictures -
automatically converting every profile picture to public. Her sister saw the
picture and long story short that was the last time she talked to her parents.
That was 2+ years ago. Facebook can't be blamed for the cultural and
relationship issues at play here, but they can be blamed for how they went
about this. And we can be blamed for trusting them.

I still use facebook. I don't blame them for trying new things, pushing the
boundaries, etc. I have however learned that no matter what that data isn't
mine. It's facebooks. And whenever facebook decides to innovate they will do
whatever they want with their data to try doing it.

~~~
jbail
You are way too easy on FB for destroying your girlfriend's relationship with
her parents. Clearly, FB deserves at least some of the blame.

Without your consent, they made private photos public. You didn't do that. You
used their privacy settings which they created to prevent this type of
situation. To have FB disregard their own privacy settings is 100% on them.

But, instead of blaming FB, you blame yourself. In light of the total collapse
of privacy we've experienced recently, it's really sad that that seems
perfectly rational.

~~~
omegant
On the contrary I think that his view is far more realist than yours. Her
girlfrind gave her private picture to a third source. If you want to keep
information secret you never give it away, not on internet not on the real
life. Is not like facebook went to her homea amd took the pictures from her
camera. I don't think that facebook did a good job here of course. But it's
more that it acted like a catalizer in a situation that was heading on tha
direction any way.

~~~
sneak
> If you want to keep information secret you never give it away, not on
> internet not on the real life.

How do you apply that seemingly unassailable stance to something like
iPhone/iCloud, where photos you take with the only camera you have on you
during once-in-a-lifetime-moments are immediately and automatically uploaded
to a third party for safekeeping?

The solution to all of this data retention/spying stuff is not "start being
meticulously paranoid with all of your data", not the least of which is
because that won't scale to the majority of the population (and it must, if we
are to retain a free society). Furthermore, communications metadata (such as
email envelopes with your residential IP and timestamp, cell tower logs that
reveal your location, or call logs that reveal your social graph) can't be
kept secret unless you _stop communicating with people_. It's a non-starter.

The solution is to alter the legal environment such that these large troves of
centralized data are much harder to exploit for evil, both by service
providers and military intelligence organizations.

~~~
baddox
> How do you apply that seemingly unassailable stance to something like
> iPhone/iCloud, where photos you take with the only camera you have on you
> during once-in-a-lifetime-moments are immediately and automatically uploaded
> to a third party for safekeeping?

I apply it equally. The same goes for VPS, EC2, etc., and (especially given
recent revelations) it's clear it should apply even to unencrypted
communications over the Internet even between nodes you control.

~~~
EGreg
Do you think if you pay an ISP specifically to not divulge your data to
others, and they do, then you should be able to get restitution legally, since
they broke the contract?

At what point can you actually have a basis for legal recourse?

Once again the problem is that we don't have decentralized technology that
would store our data encrypted and serve it only to those who we have granted
access. But we will. Actually the new MegaUpload is encrypted.

~~~
baddox
I absolutely think that you can and should make contracts that provide for
restitution, if possible. It's up to each individual what sort of restitution
they would require for leaking certain pieces of their data.

------
novum
FB has, over the years, gradually lost my trust until I deleted my account in
November 2010 after having been a member since late 2004 when FB was college-
only.

As a 20-something living in SF, it's a daily thing now: I don't get invited to
parties, I don't know about birthdays, I don't see my friends' photos, I don't
have any contact with anyone from high school or college anymore.

There is a real social cost for someone in my situation to not be on FB. I
struggle to quantify the harm, but it's there. I struggle too to explain to my
friends why I'm not on FB. And yet I still think I'm better off without it.

The whole situation contributes to the isolation I already experience as an
introvert and someone who doesn't much care for bars, clubs, or alcohol --
though I suppose I don't need to remind this audience that being alone !=
loneliness.

I guess it doesn't matter much anyway, since FB is still collecting
information on me (and other 'shadow profiles' of users not on FB).

~~~
hannibal5
Growing number of my friends are in FB with fake names and identities. It's
more complicated when you add new friends or they want to add you, but
otherwise it's ok for keeping touch with close friends.

Yes, its against FB user agreement but fuck that.

~~~
pjbrunet
In theory it sounds like a good idea, but imagine a scenario where your bank
needs to confirm your identity and they outsource this task to a 3rd party
that has incorrect data about you (actually happened to me) and when you
provide the correct information they tell you it's incorrect and conclude you
are not who you say you are. In my particular case they just had old data that
was simply inaccurate. Is it unlikely that 3rd party would buy data from
Facebook or some entity that obtained the inaccurate data from Facebook? I
don't know but I think you see my point. Incorrect data that was inadvertently
connected to you could potentially come back to cause you frustration in the
future. That said, I don't necessarily disagree with what you're doing and
hope Facebook is soon replaced by P2P software.

~~~
jamestc
>Is it unlikely that 3rd party would buy data from Facebook or some entity
that obtained the inaccurate data from Facebook?

Probably. Using a fake/altered name is incredibly common on Facebook,
especially among younger people. I think any 3rd party assigned with that task
would realize that and avoid it.

------
sgrenfro
My name is Scott Renfro, and I’m a software engineer at Facebook working on
security and privacy. I thought I'd post the comment I submitted on the
original blog post here as well. We’ve put a lot of work into making deletions
permanent, so I can imagine how frustrated you must be. I’m pretty sure those
story deletions are permanent, and I can’t think of any place where we can or
do automatically restore user-deleted content months later.

If you happen to have any more details about specific stories that reappeared,
I’d love to try and figure out exactly what happened. Admittedly, that may be
difficult now that several months have passed.

As one of the other commenters mentioned, your Activity Log is a better place
to get a full list of your activity and delete it item-by-item. It also shows
posts that Timeline omits and includes other types of content such as likes
and comments. This help page may be useful
[https://www.facebook.com/help/activitylog](https://www.facebook.com/help/activitylog)
and you can find your Activity Log at
[https://www.facebook.com/me/allactivity?privacy_source=activ...](https://www.facebook.com/me/allactivity?privacy_source=activity_log&log_filter=all&filter_onlyme=on)

I couldn’t tell from your description, but one possibility is that you only
saw and deleted the stories rendered on your Timeline, which is just a summary
of your activity.

~~~
Steuard
As long as you're here, any comment on the (current) top-rated comment by
lukejduncan? How can we trust that our private information today won't be
similarly exposed by a settings change tomorrow? (I _hope_ that nothing I've
posted would endanger my relationship with my family, but I know others aren't
as safe.)

~~~
sgrenfro
I'd like to think we wouldn't need to make such a fundamental change again in
the future, but if we did decide it was necessary, I hope that we would give
everyone plenty of time to make whatever change to their account was necessary
to avoid painful outcomes like that.

~~~
snth
"I hope" isn't much comfort.

------
dangerlibrary
I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago. The whole deal - waited the
requisite month or so to ensure that it was gone, and any further login
attempts wouldn't re-instate the account.

Six months later I signed up with a different email address, and Facebook
forced me to confirm my account with my phone number. Javascript Error - that
phone number is associated with another Facebook account. I click OK, and I'm
redirected to my "new" account with all my old Facebook friends (on the
opposite side of the country) showing up as "people I may know."

Nothing is deleted from Facebook, ever.

~~~
threeseed
How did you delete your account ?

Because no where in Facebook does it allow you to do this. Only deactivate
your account.

~~~
uiri
You can request to have the account deleted. More info here:
[https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674](https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674)

------
yid
I find rants like this quite interesting, especially when they end with lines
like this:

> That is why I may delete my Facebook account. And that is why you should
> too.

"May". In spite of this pretty egregious behavior/bug, it's still a " _may_
delete my Facebook account". That alone says something about the longevity of
the business.

~~~
baddox
It says something about the immense social utility that Facebook provides.

~~~
a3_nm
... because everyone is using it. It says nothing about the difference in
social utility between the current state of the world and an alternate state
of the world in which everyone would be using a federated social network.
Facebook is a local optimum from which it will be hard to move away.

~~~
baddox
I completely agree. However, when my mother wants to locate an old friend from
her childhood, my description of a currently non-existent widely-used
federated social network is of little use to her, but Facebook seems to serve
her quite well.

------
devindotcom
There seems to be a philosophical difference in how users versus services view
ownership of data and posts like this. If you write status "foo" and someone
else comments "bar," who owns what? Do you own the comment because it is
subordinate to your post? If your post was just a letter, and someone wrote an
essay in a comment underneath it, do you own that essay and can you delete it
without permission from its creator?

No, we shouldn't trust facebook. But no, we also shouldn't pretend that the
word delete means the same thing on your personal computer as it does on a
shared resource like facebook. It's way more complicated than that. It
_should_ be simple, but it isn't, at least not yet.

Also, not upvoting this because of the eye-rollingly overdone "merriam-webster
defines..." line. God, I can't stand that!

~~~
jarek
When you send someone a letter, you might have a copy and they will have a
copy, but the post shouldn't. If you burn your copy, you don't expect the post
to send you a backup.

------
pyvek
Another thing to note is that they don't want their users to delete stuff or
do any action that may suggest abandoning the platform. I thought that I
deleted my profile 1.5 years ago but I tried logging in last week (after
seeing a similar HN thread) and was surprised to find that it was all there.
It occured to me that I must have deactivated my profile. Then I tried looking
for delete option but couldn't find it anywhere. All I could find was a
_deactivate_ button. I had to use a third party (Google) to find out about how
to delete my profile.

Facebook has made it unnecessarily hard to delete accounts and instead pushes
the _deactivate_ option in a very psychologically manipulative way. Even after
using the delete option, I'm sure that they're going to retain my data for as
long as they like. I still did it for my own sake, prevent myself from using
it at all.

------
ten7
Perhaps the way to delete the information in the account is to replace the
status posts, comments, photos with junk. Words and sentences that don't mean
anything; photos that are noise. Perhaps there's a way to do that in an
automated fashion. I'd use that.

~~~
switch007
I'm sure that any edit is really a new version which is then displayed. =/

~~~
ten7
You're probably right.

Then what about replacing it with junk? THen doing it again? Then again? Then
again?

------
baddox
While I agree with the gist of the argument (Facebook shouldn't bring back
user-deleted posts, and you shouldn't trust Facebook), the semantic arguments
over the term "delete" are frivolous. It's not unreasonable for Facebook to
keep storing things that I delete. Windows has the Recycle Bin, word
processors have undo, databases have backups, etc. The problem is restoring
the content _without the user 's permission_. Citing a dictionary definition
then overfitting your argument to that specific definition is something I
expect from a high school speech class.

------
mahyarm
This is the frustrating thing about facebook. They often have bugs that make
things suddenly become public, or settings for visibility of new posts all of
a sudden reset to 'all friends' or public. G+ handles this kind of stuff far
better.

I really wish there was an auto-delete items older than X months. Most of the
value of facebook goes away after a month, anything older than that is usually
negative history digging and stalking by others.

~~~
ancarda
Except that this isn't a bug. The user asked for the content to be deleted.
For it to become public, they must have used a "delete" flag or something
similar. The point is they didn't actually delete the content, rather just
flag it as deleted.

~~~
i0exception
Actually deleting content would be a very expensive operation at Facebook's
scale. Flagging it as deleted is the most optimal way. What's troubling is
that this content somehow got undeleted on its own. Not once, but twice.

~~~
guelo
Every operation at Facebook scale is expensive. But they have the resources.
They don't do something because they don't want to, not because manipulating
their data is hard. They do complicated things to their data all the time.

~~~
Zelphyr
Agreed. I'm not buying the "its hard/expensive" argument that so many people
seem to be submitting in this thread.

The fact is, when Facebook gives you the option to "delete" something there is
a reasonable expectation that by doing so that post, picture, etc... will be
deleted. Removed. Gone. Permanently. If they want to give you the option to
retrieve it later in case you accidentally delete something then call it "Flag
for deletion" instead.

To do ANYTHING else is disingenuous at best. Otherwise known as a lie.

This is yet more proof that users of Facebook are the product and will be
treated as such. Whoever pays Facebook actual money gets to dictate the terms
and they are the people that want Facebook to never delete your data.

------
hamoid
I wonder if I could get my account really deleted and my data put offline by
breaking the terms [1] (posting ads and logos or sharing my password for
example).

I'm afraid it would not work, though. Probably they delete the recent content,
leave the rest online, and refuse me to log in...

Did anyone try?

[1]
[https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms](https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms)

------
pothibo
I understand this is not good. I do.

But I'm surprised people think entity like Facebook, Google and any other web
businesses delete records permanently. It's not worth it on so many level:

\- People that actually want to retrieve their stuff,

\- It's harder to implement a full delete than it is to add a flag,

\- They would have to give up on data-mining assets.

I don't endorse, but I understand.

~~~
polymathist
Flagging items as deleted as opposed to actually deleting them is one thing.
Of course it's not ideal for someone who wants to revoke facbook's access to
their data, but there is more or less no difference from a user perspective.
If I understand correctly, what's going on here is that after the posts and
other content were flagged as deleted, they were somehow unflagged and became
fully visible again. That's different, and really not okay at all.

~~~
pothibo
I agree with you: It's a bug and it's bad.

~~~
wilecoyote
Except that a bug implies it was accidental. Everyone deserves the benefit of
doubt, but Facebook's history is exceptional in this regard.

Similar to the OP, I have ethical concerns with some aspects of what Facebook
does, or at least obvious harmful side effects of what they do. But I think
for me the reason they bother me more than Google or others often lumped into
the same category is the consistent and, as far as I can tell, completely
unabashed disingenuousness they display (e.g., the history of public
statements made every time this has happened going back almost to their
founding days).

------
randartie
Timeline shows only popular posts you make. If you delete the posts on
timeline then only a subset of your posts are deleted AND they will get
replaced by other less popular posts you made in the past. You'd need to go
into user settings and delete items directly from the activity log. This
clearly isn't a huge usecase (1 by 1 item deletion).

This is just another case of user misunderstanding/error which gets blamed on
facebook.

------
D9u
I stopped using FB over a year ago, and I deleted my account there last
December.

Once you delete your FB account your profile remains visible for another two
weeks, provided you don't login during the interim.

Today I can happily say that I am no longer on the publicly-available Facebook
site, but who knows if FB maintains an LEO version of the site for use by the
fascists (spies) and other government entities...

------
jorgecastillo
Every time this sort of articles come up, I feel glad I don't have a Facebook
account. As I see it if you care enough about somebody, you have their phone
number and their address.

------
rinon
Perhaps FB automatically decided that the deletions were in fact unauthorized
tampering with the account and nicely restored the "damage?"

~~~
whaevr
Thats what I was thinking, Im going to go ahead and guess that not too many fb
users go through their entire timeline and delete Every.Single.Post. Flagging
something like that as hostile and then "restoring" your timeline makes sense.
However, I feel like there should be some kind of communication going on in
email before something is actually done (for the mass deletes and auto
restoring) and a simple "click here if this is what you really wanted to do"
would suffice..

------
h2ohno
I did the very same thing with my account, and also noticed everything that I
deleted still showing up in the timeline. Pissed me off.

Need I remind everyone that Zuckerberg himself said people were "dumb fucks"
for trusting him with their data?

------
mililani
Just create a fake FB account for things like authentication, or getting
coupons, etc...

I don't trust FB, but I do need it for certain things. Keeping in touch with
friends/family is definitely not one of them

~~~
benbeltran
In a very creepy aspect of this. I closed my account a while ago, and I opened
a dummy one with another email, because I still needed to mod a few
communities. The recommendations were the usual: friends of people in the
communities and such. About a month ago it started recommending family
members, classmates, and friends. Really accurate. It's creepy: I don't have a
smartphone from which it could syphon the contacts, I'm not using my real name
and I was using an email that I only use for facebook. I have no idea what
data it's using. But I was not surprised, I just thought. "Damn it, they found
a way"

------
johnjlocke
I always think back to that time when Zuck was on stage a couple of years ago,
and he was talking about user-generated content, and he slipped, and referred
to it as Facebook's. There you go. Anything you put on their site is their
property, to do with as they like. I really think their days are numbered. Not
anytime soon, but eventually, they are going to become as obsolete as
Friendster, Bebo, and MySpace are now, but first a new social network that is
built in that same style must emerge.

------
ultimoo
I wonder what facebookers who are HNers have to say about this. Do you guys
have any opinions about this -- it is by design? Are there ways around it?
Will there be ways around this?

------
speeder
I just remembered a very interesting tale.

There is a social networks for some stuff that you don't want known (for
example, sexual fetishes, or gay stuff, or anti-government stuff, and so on).

I know a case where someone (that was never found out who, although there are
some suspects) in one of those social networks started to attack some other
people there. Until things started to get out of hand, with the person finding
the Facebook profiles of those involved (even if they had completely fake
profiles) and posting on that network, and then getting their profile in that
network and posting back on Facebook...

Then the attacker posted on the niche social network the Facebook profiles of
children of the victims, stuff escalated to the point of people hiring private
investigators and professional assassins (some of the victims were soldiers
and/or military police shock troops, and were not amused at all at threats
toward their family... and happily supported plans for a assassination).

Happily the attacker suddenly gave up, and things de-escalated... But it made
me much more aware that social networks can be VERY dangerous...

Of course (considering the tone of social networks here, professions of those
involved, and that people wanted to do illegal stuff) I cannot explain better
or give more information.

~~~
PavlovsCat
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem." ― Douglas
Adams

------
donniezazen
Not having facebook makes you look like an anti-social element irrespective of
what it does to your mental health and well being. At the end of the day, I
feel like make a small circle of friends that engage with you on deep level
and not just superficially. What kind of friend it would who couldn't or
forgets to text or call you?

~~~
koralatov
That's exactly my feeling on it. Since I left Facebook at the start of 2011,
I've seen my friends just as much --- perhaps more --- than when I was on
there, and I hear from them at least as frequently. The only difference is
that I don't get the occasional, insincere message from people I went to
school with who are bored and looking for something to do.

~~~
donniezazen
Also it is more fun to hear about them face to face and not read a generic
message on facebook and they tend to have more things to say to you.

------
marknutter
I've had similar issues with Facebook. After it became clear they were using
my "likes" and profile information (favorite movies, books, tv shows, etC) to
serve me ads I removed every single "like" I had ever done and all information
from my profile. Yet I still get targeted adds based on that information.

~~~
pjbrunet
That info has been resold 100 times already ;-)

------
kailuowang
Thank you. I didn't know that you can actually delete your facebook account
until I saw you post. The only option I knew was to deactivate the account.
From the UI, I couldn't find any other option, but a single Google point me to
the delete account form. Thanks!

------
boi_v2
I bet when you "delete" something facebook (and many others) just marks it as
"hidden" so you will think it is gone.

The same happen to me but with yahoo, I had an old account that was long
unused, because I didn't want to lose any contact that could happen I
redirected it to another email, then, after a couple of years, I decided to
delete the account because only spams were being redirected. A year later I
notice that emails started to come from this "deleted" account again and so I
tried to login and for my surprise it was active.

So don't expect to "delete" anything, and I think we shouldn't expect to have
our rights respected, these companies provide a service that is not really for
us.

~~~
pjbrunet
Supposedly I don't have a Yahoo account, deleted it several years ago. It was
very difficult to delete. They make you talk to the fraud/abuse dept, ask you
personal questions to prove who you are, ask you over and over again are you
absolutely sure, it's a long process. Same with Amazon, it's a long,
frustrating process. Then I get an Amazon gift card. To claim the money I
signed up for an account (used a different email address) and surprise,
surprise, they had all my data saved, old purchases, etc.

This should be illegal and I bet there are some countries that don't tolerate
it. Germany?

------
cliveowen
One thing that has always bothered me it's that if you ever decide to post a
comment on a site that uses the Facebook commenting system and you decide not
to publish that comment on your timeline, then you have no way of recovering
it (and thus deleting it, if you ever decide so). You have to resort to search
engines that behave poorly for this kind of things.

I admit that after some mishaps Facebook has greatly improved the privacy
controls on the site and allowed user to more easily control what they share
and with whom, but I guess pretty much everyone would agree that it's not
enough yet. We need the ability to delete the very content that we create,
everyone has the right to be forgotten should he decide so.

~~~
0x0
Is it not even present in the "Activity Log" screen?

~~~
cliveowen
No, it's not. If they're not on your timeline they're gone forever.

------
Duhck
Clearly they have a bug, but as far as actually deleting your data; I am
willing to be it'll never be deleted.

They couldn't possibly manage the data if you could remove pieces, since
everything on facebook is intertwined (likes, comments, shares, etc).

aka this doesn't surprise me.

~~~
eblume
I spent a fairly large amount of time trying to completely delete my account -
it involved emails, 'hidden' links, and multiple confirmation boxes using a
nonstandard UI for facebook.

A few days ago I made a brand new account (but using the same email as before)
and was greeted with the suggestion to add ALL of my old friends right back
again.

Clearly nothing has been deleted, and I now feel confirmed that it never, ever
will be.

~~~
ajanuary
Just a theory, but could it be that all those friends have your email in their
contact list, and when they've done a bulk import Facebook has remembered that
connection so it can suggest them to you if you ever join (and vice versa)?
The data isn't on your side, it's on there's.

Of course there's a whole other (worthy) debate about that, but it doesn't
necessarily mean Facebook didn't delete the data you added.

~~~
eblume
That's a solid point. Thanks!

------
jgeerts
There is one part of this that I agree with, that is the part where you say
that if you delete all items one by one (why don't they have a delete all?)
you want them never to be visible for anyone again.

The part I don't agree with is that you expect that the data is physically
deleted from the server. I think and expect that big companies don't wipe all
your data on command, they simply set a flag for deleted records. Really
deleting the data also has a technical impact for them, it probably depends on
the company's policy. It would be great if they did wipe all data but I really
think most of them don't and have some sort of an aging process or really
never delete your data.

------
capkutay
Personal story, but nevertheless humiliating and tied to facebook. I was never
able to get an explanation or even contact FB's support about it.

Within a matter of hours, I lost over 150 facebook friends. Somehow, it was
also tied into instagram and I unfollowed all my friends. Not sure how this
happened. But you could imagine that it's embarrassing to have to re-friend
people on facebook and explain that you didn't do it on purpose. I'm sure
there are some people I forgot to refriend who think that I just de-friended
them for personal reasons. This just ties into the fact that whatever happens
to you on facebook will be broadcast to your entire social network.

------
grandalf
I think this is far more likely due to incompetence on the part of Facebook
than malice.

~~~
claudius
I tend to be more lenient of malice than incompetence. If your goals don’t
align with mine, fine, maybe we can still work something out. But if you are
in the data-handling business (Facebook, Google etc. are) and you fail to
handle data properly, you should rather die today than tomorrow.

------
jmandzik
Facebook lost me a while back when the Android app first came out. Logging
into the site and finding contacts that had no account in my facebook
"phonebook" felt like a breach of trust. I figured they'd act in good faith
and enrich Android contacts with facebook data. I did NOT think they'd yank my
contacts the other way, doing who-knows-what with it. Shame on me for not
reading the app permissions with more scrutiny.

Leaving facebook removed a distraction I did not realize I was weary of. At
risk of sounding dramatic, it felt like I got a few minutes a day of my life
back.

------
ssw1n
Sequel to the article incoming:

"OMG! I deleted my Facebook account two months ago, and my friends just told
me that they wished me birthday on my timeline last night. OMG! Facebook, I
trusted you! Why!? OMG!"

Seriously, I love the last sentence of the article: "That is why I may delete
my Facebook account. And that is why you should too."

If Facebook will not delete the posts on the Timeline, why is the author still
believing that deleting the account will genuinely delete the account? The
data you disclosed to the social network is here to stay. The only way you can
stop is to not give it more.

------
shadesandcolour
I wonder if this is the case because those wall posts aren't specifically
yours. You posted those onto another user's timeline, and thus it's probably
not within your power to delete them. I'm not saying that this is the right
thing to do, but it fits with the available data. If you removed all your
photos and they're still gone, but wall posts are still there, it's an issue
with how Facebook view data ownership. If you delete status updates or
relationships, work etc, they stay gone too I imagine.

------
davexunit
Ditch Facebook and join Diaspora. It's a great project that Rails/Javascript
devs can contribute to.

[http://diasporaproject.org/](http://diasporaproject.org/)

------
gtirloni
Yesterday I started deleting all my FB content. My FB account got locked and
released 24h later. When I logged in, all my content was restored. I'm still
trying to understand why.

------
alariccole
"That is why I may delete my Facebook account. And that is why you should
too."

We should also do something that you're not even certain you're going to do
yourself?

~~~
koralatov
Previously on the same blog (and linked to at the bottom of the post no
less!):

``Don't Be Fooled Facebook Is Forever''[1]:

    
    
        I stopped using Facebook because I distrusted them,
        and what I discovered yesterday only confirms that
        I was right.
    

and ``Facebook --- The Last Straw''[2]:

    
    
        All this may take a while, but I’m going to remove
        myself from Facebook and I’m going to do it on my
        terms, not theirs.
    

[1]: [http://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/dont-be-
foo...](http://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/dont-be-fooled-
facebook-is-forever/)

[2]:
[https://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/facebook-t...](https://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/facebook-
the-last-straw/)

------
rshm
Similar,

I deleted my twitter profile picture as well as account in 2008. I had a url
of the profile image saved. After five years the the link works and image is
still there.

~~~
twistedpair
Clear your cache?

~~~
shdon
I wager his cache has been cleared somewhere in the past 5 years.

------
dysinger
I just went and looked too and all my content going back to 2007 which a
painstaking hand deleted is back(!)

I hope mark zuckerberg ends up broke doing LAMP consulting.

------
diminoten
For the 100th time, the only reason any of us are on Facebook and not Google+
or MySpace or Friendster or whatever is because all of our friends are on
there with us.

Facebook can and will do whatever it wants to abuse this fact, and as long as
they provide the most convenient way to communicate with other people, there
is nothing we can do about it, period.

So rant away, my Internet friends, it's all we can do anyway.

~~~
pjbrunet
-1

------
nadahalli
The only reason I am on Facebook and also not use AdBlock on Google Search is,
I am in the internet business. And if you are in the internet-business, you do
have to be a part of the system: all in.

I do not want to mull over a social media monetizing idea and wonder if
Facebook has already figured it out. I just need to be there and know it
myself.

Sad reason, but that's the way it is.

------
PavlovsCat
_I am not going to waste time deleting all of my content a third time._

I did that once, there's a Firefox extension (the name escapes me at the
moment sorry) you can use to create macros. Sure it's useless in a way, but
it's also fun in a way :D If it pops back, it's macro time again -- better
than nothing, right?

~~~
gtirloni
I used one of the userscripts.org extensions for that and it caused my FB
account to get locked for 24h. When I came back all my content had been
restored (I know that because while the script was working, I had another
window opened checking the progress).

Now the extension does not work anymore (the button it adds to the setting
pages is not showing).

------
faizanaziz
Thats exactly the reason why we built [http://pixter.in](http://pixter.in) .
Facebook's incentive is to get as much data of you and retain it. Our
incentive is to build the best product. If your incentive's are clear and
aligned things like this won't happen.

------
Arnor
Regarding: >> Or is it? If Facebook doesn’t understand what should happen when
I delete my wall posts, who’s to say that if I delete my account, it won’t
come back too?

I thought I had deleted my account in 2009, but I was curious when I saw this.
It turns out I can still log in. Curious...

------
ziko
I'll give you a little advice that's been working wonderfully for me so far -
don't ever post something that is politically/ethnically/whatever questionable
and you'll be fine. Even better than that, it'll play in your favour.

~~~
angersock
You probably have one of the most bland profiles out there.

(This may be a good thing.)

~~~
ziko
I also run a pretty tight ship on Facebook. Only closest friends and family
(13 people in total), visibility to friends only and such things.

Father created Facebook account a week ago to keep up with our favourite
sports team. I sent him a friend request but he managed to hide it and didn't
find it later. Yesterday he received an email saying something in this style:
Do you know these people? A list with 13 people was underneath it and these 13
people were my friends.

Thankfully he knows most of them so it didn't get awkward but still a massive,
massive worry for me.

------
antitrust
Should you enter your real information on any internet site? It's kind of like
when stores ask for your phone number: there's no real obligation to them to
not use it for spam or re-sell it. I always give a fake and ask them to email.

------
smutticus
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

It's simple folks. If you still trust FB with anything at this point you're
going to get hurt. If you do trust them with something and they burn you then
it's your fault.

------
tedsanders
I think the title is an overreaction. Just because something can and has
violated your trust doesn't mean you should never trust it. Never is a very
strong word.

------
yaix
In the EU, there was a law in the makeing around "the right to be forgotten".
Looks like we really need it, probably for Google as well.

------
mtgx
Facebook always does this. Everytime there's a privacy policy change in some
way, they restore everything to default (public) again.

------
shmerl
Just use better alternatives like Diaspora.

------
vog
In this context, it's worth noting that as a Facebook user, you are not their
custumer, but their product.

------
readme
And Google doesn't delete your emails, either. Even if you click delete.

They own you.

------
eyeareque
So if you break their T.O.S. bad enough, will they delete you for real?

~~~
baddox
Why would they do that when they could just lock you out of your account?

------
sidcool
I read other posts by this guy and he really seems pissed of at FB.

------
marcelocamanho
It is probably issues with cache and/or data replication.

------
talhof8
Do you think facebook is going down?

~~~
Helpful_Bunny
Looking at the trends, I suspect Facebook will be the goat in the tech group
cull that's being contemplated.[1] The reasons for thinking this are three-
fold:

a) Extremely poor share performance post-IPO (which has irked a lot of heavy-
weights) and demise of Zynga's revenue sources. Although ad revenue is there,
there's a lot of industry research showing that $/click return is minimal at
best (out of all of these models, FB appears to have the lowest, and easiest
to Bot). FB ad revenue has more to do with the current glut in Corporate $cash
holdings than real returns, fyi.

b) Lack of utility outside data mining / advertising (all others, even dead
ducks like Yahoo! have secondary and tertiary utility, not to mention the
shining lights like Google who are still willing to push the envelope). By
this, I'm not referencing Social Utility, but Business Utility.

c) Their ties to NSA / current security concerns go so far beyond the base
level of acceptance that it's a given they'll suffer hard blow-back. Those
Bilderberg meetings weren't about unicorns and skittles and any serious
business should be concerned about having their employees mined so easily (and
in certain fields, more open to Social Engineering hacks directly due to this
intel). Even as an American company, you'd want this be considering this; for
the rest of the world, it's a major concern.

You can argue about these, but I suspect as they hit their 10 year mark, there
will be a hotter, faster, hungrier and probably more honest model to replace
them (i.e. "We will do X with this data - agree, and get Y benefit, or even
better - we'll pay you Z for it, and not in Farmville Tokens, or even "pay Z+1
to go dark").

Anyhow, since this is free commentary, YMMV. But, realistically - the age of
the "Dumb Fucks" is closing. Wild Wild West is ending, and the Buffalo ain't
roaming no more. If you need that explained: a large amount of the cash
generated by web 2.0 (e.g. Huffington Post sale) was created by parasitical
leveraging of user's ignorance & goodwill. I suspect that's about to change
with a newer generation; although, hey, Pop Idol still makes money, so perhaps
not - but it will only be farming the ignorant, which is hardly "cutting
edge". Face Book as the online Walmart - there's an image to take to heart as
you look @ it's stock price over the next 6 months.

Full disclosure: Never had a Face Book account, because Privacy / Anonymity is
the coolest thing in a connected world, nor do I hold any FB stock, nor am I
shorting FB stock in any manner.

[1]FT - Real progressives believe in breaking up Google (no link, as it is pay
walled). I don't agree with the opinion piece, I'm merely using it to denote a
recent trend.

------
3327
wow after reading this I went and closed account.

------
kimlelly
Is this real life?

Do you really think it's still necessary to state that you should not trust a
company that works with the NSA?

Does anybody do any thinking after reading the news?

What exactly do you need to wake up?

EDIT: :-D just keep downvoting and burry your heads deep in the sand...

------
workbench
"My name is Scott Renfro, and I’m a software engineer at Facebook working on
security and privacy. We’ve put a lot of work into making deletions permanent"

Had to LOL at this comment

