
Why I Canceled My Facebook Account - imperator
http://primevector.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/why-i-canceled-my-facebook-account/
======
Goladus
I would love for a company that collects personal information and shares it or
makes predictions or generates advertising based on it to expose ALL of it to
me.

Don't just tell me what you're collecting, and what you do in abstract terms,
show me exactly what you have and how you use it. If you have data on the
frequency with which I visit friend's profiles, I should be able to see it. If
you have data on external links that I've followed, I should be able to see
that too. I should be able to see the amount of time I spend logged in, if
they track that.

Everything. There should be not one thing that is not available to me through
the basic interface. It doesn't have to be on the front page, but there should
be an interface and you shouldn't have to be a developer to know how to use
it.

I would always favor a company that was open about every piece of data that it
held about me, AND everything it did with that data.

~~~
jacquesm
There are laws to that effect, that they should disclose what they have on
you, for instance, in the Netherlands there is a law that is called the 'wet
bescherming persoonsgegevens' (law on protection of personal information),
which gives you the explicit right to request _all_ information that is kept
on you, and to request deletion of such information.

------
gaius
Yes FB is definitely becoming less useful. For example, it used to be that if
I listed my employer and set it to "friends only" then that was that. Now, if
you visit my profile, it's still friends only - but if you go to my employer's
public page, my name is (actually was) listed there! Same with all my previous
employers, the colleges I attended, my interests, etc etc. Hometown too maybe!
So I have removed all of that.

I can't help but think this will backfire for FB. Their long-term value is
being deeply embedded in people's real lives. The real value of FB for me is
that my friends merely need to keep their profiles up to date and I have a
self-updating address book and birthday calendar. If no-one lists that then FB
is merely as sticky as Twitter which is to say, not much.

~~~
philk
FB also seems to get less useful over time as you add more people.

Initially, when you have a few people you know really well and get on with,
you can post quite freely knowing that it's unlikely to come back and bite
you.

Later, as you gain a truckload of acquaintances you have to be much more
measured and it winds up feeling like you're running some sort of discount PR
agency.

~~~
frazerb
This is an interesting departure from Metcalfe's Law [ the value of the
network is proportionate to the square of the number of nodes in the network
].

Perhaps Metcalfe's Law applies up to a certain size, and then tails off
thereafter.

There is a limit on the number of people that us humans can reasonably be
expected to have friendships with. I have a feeling that it is substantially
smaller than the number of 'friends' that facebook attracts.

~~~
philk
For FB I suspect that the ideal would be a network with lots of nodes but few
connections; I want to be able to find my friends but I don't want them to be
connected to so many that they have to sanitize their posts/thoughts.

~~~
prodigal_erik
I sanitize my posts (and I post very little), and I would no matter how few
connections I had. Given their history of privacy flaws, it's not what my
friends see that I worry about.

------
transmit101
I perma-deleted my account several weeks ago. I was fed up with watching the
not-so gradual erosion of privacy which has been occurring since I first
opened my account in 2006.

My problem is that the contract, whether legal or implied, that I had with
Facebook offered me a certain level of privacy, and protection of data. This
is what Facebook built their reputation on. Because of this contract, I
uploaded a lot of personal photos, notes and information and generally became
deeply involved in the service.

Every time Facebook have a new API release or re-design, however, I became
familiar with the uneasy awareness that another slice of this personal
information was about to become available to businesses, friends of friends,
the general public and goodness knows who else. The final straw for me was the
realisation that my friends list was going to be made public, and there was
nothing I could do about it. There is no way I want the list of my personal
friends and acquaintances being made public: it is just beyond the pail. In
hindsight, I should never have put that information on the web at all, but
there you have it -- I trusted Facebook to look after that information, and
Facebook repeatedly broke my trust, and that's why I've left.

I believe that there is very good reason to protect the basic tenets of our
privacy online, and Facebook have shown themselves singularly incapable of
doing that. As well as that, I am highly unimpressed with the direction and
quality of the product, particularly the UI which has devolved from one of the
best on the web to a cluttered, unpleasant mess.

I haven't missed Facebook once. Nowadays, I stick to Twitter, where the
contract is clear. Everything is public, and we all know where we stand.

------
olaf
I think, Mr. Zuckerberg is a more evil exploiter with weak ethics than I'm
willing to accept.

~~~
tfh
Money has proven to be very effective in bending ethics. Many people would do
worse for a fraction of Mr. Zuck's money. I think judging him as a _evil
exploiter with weak ethics_ is a little harsh.

~~~
Silhouette
> I think judging him as a evil exploiter with weak ethics is a little harsh.

Why? Doing something bad doesn't become OK just because you got paid a lot of
money to do it. Indeed, a reasonable definition of ethical behaviour would be
doing the right thing even when faced with significant incentives not to.

~~~
philwelch
I have never been forced to choose between becoming a billionaire and holding
onto my ethical convictions, and I suspect you haven't either. I'm not
comfortable with either of us standing in judgment of someone who has.

~~~
kingkilr
I've also never been faced with the decision to torture someone or not, that
doesn't stop me from making moral judgement about those actions either. The
point of an ethical system is to help you make judgements about decisions, if
your answer to every ethical question is, "I've never had to make that
decision" your ethical system is useless.

~~~
foldr
There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a
bad person." I think the OP was saying we should be cautious in making
judgments of the second sort.

~~~
Silhouette
> There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a
> bad person."

I disagree. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. If John
repeatedly does bad things, then John _is_ a bad person. How are we to judge a
person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?

~~~
foldr
Surely it has to be possible for a good person to do bad things (at least
occasionally). I think it would be going a bit far to eliminate the
distinction entirely.

>How are we to judge a person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?

That is kind of the point. Arguably, you just _can't_ judge people fairly,
because you never know what's going on inside. That doesn't mean that you
can't criticize people's actions, just that you should be cautious about
making more fundamental judgments about their character.

~~~
Silhouette
I find myself acknowledging that we all make mistakes for the second time in
as many posts...

Sure, someone's moral character isn't a black-and-white question. People
aren't really "good" or "bad" in absolute terms, so in a sense calling anyone
a "good person" or a "bad person" can only ever be a generalisation based on
the balance of what they do.

In this case, however, if someone _repeatedly_ does _very bad_ things, they'd
better also be doing even more very good things to make up for it, or I think
it's fair to apply the "bad person" label.

~~~
foldr
The point is that people have an inner life which isn't necessarily reflected
in their actions. Someone might do "good" things all the time, but if you
could read their thoughts and see their motivations, you might not necessarily
consider them to be as good as they appear. Similarly, someone who's done a
lot of bad things might not seem so bad if you knew their inner motivations.
Actions only give you half the picture (if that).

You also seem to be making a terminological point about when it's ok to apply
the term "good person" or "bad person", but that's a red herring. You can use
those terms however you like, but it doesn't have anything to do with what I
was saying.

------
SlyShy
I'm malicious, so I wouldn't actually delete my account. I'd just gradually
falsify all my information. That way they don't get any data mining benefit
from my account, in fact, their data collection is being confounded by it. ;)

~~~
philk
With the possible drawback that anyone who you're connected to thinks that
you're becoming a Belgian monk with a goat fetish.

~~~
SwellJoe
If my friends don't know enough to recognize the blatant falsehoods, they
aren't really my friends, now, are they?

~~~
nkassis
For now but in the future, facebook will be the only way to communicate with
your friends once they are placed in this little entertainment box with no
window and only copyright safe media.

------
PeachUrge
I closed my FaceBook account because they keep changing the privacy settings.
They also made the new settings more complicated than it needed to be and it
seems to me that they are trying to trick people into sharing more information
than they might want to.

Additionally, I find the Facebook CEO's view on privacy disturbing.

------
lwhi
I think the rise of 'free' services and websites presents a set of quite dis-
empowering problems for users.

Previously, after buying something, if we were unhappy in anyway we'd always
be able to 'vote with our cash'. It was recognised that we deserved to be
compensated if our experience of a company fell short.

Modern (free-to-access) sites obviously aren't free, we pay for usage by
giving attention (via eyeballs or behaviour). However, this exchange of value
isn't as tangible as it once was when we had to pay money for a service.

Maybe moving to a paid-for model might actually be better for consumers /
participants - because we'd be able to make more explicit demands?

At the moment we can stop using the service - but the assessment a user makes
is probably quite often weighed up against this illusion of 'zero-cost'.

~~~
kjuhgfghjk
Like the quality of service and customer response you get with paid for
cellphone and cable TV services?

~~~
lwhi
Well, maybe I'm in the minority - but when I'm not happy with something I pay
for, I make damn sure it gets changed. It takes a bit of effort - and usually
involves a bit of time, but it works.

What can we do with a company like Facebook or Google when we're no longer
happy?

~~~
go37pi
We can stop using it, and create or support alternatives.

We're used to the cost of a service being its monetary price, or more
recently, the demands it makes on our attention. Perhaps a new type of model
is being developed in which the price of a service we desire is not in the
form of money or attention, but our data. And in this case the way a company
uses our data is a real "cost", rather than a mutually beneficial outcome.

I think that threatening to withdraw and withdrawing payment, whether monetary
or otherwise, will prove to be a significant balance on the actions of
companies. If the changes are significantly detrimental, consumers will take
the actions they consider necessary to address those concerns.

~~~
lwhi
Thinking about potential situations which might involve FB users showing
discontent, brings striking factory workers to mind.

I suppose when we use FB - we are actually participating in a kind of factory,
so perhaps the analogy is apt.

------
Tichy
Scary story about the Pandora thing. Since I am not an active FB user, I have
not yet experienced this brave new world. So hearing such stories about "the
Facebook experience" is actually interesting.

I have a FB account to be able to see the occasionally linked page on FB, but
the interface was too complicated to me even before all this privacy mess.

------
pilib
Good for you. I deleted mine a little more than a year and a half ago, when
rumors started appearing they would change their ToS and privacy policies in a
way that would make me uncomfortable using the service.

I've tried to explain to friends why, but the only response I got from them
was "I've got nothing to hide". In any case, with cheap/free hosting, I can
host my profile page, with information I want to give away.

Some random quote from a comment (slashdot, perhaps?):

"People fail to realise that Google's and Facebook's customers are the
advertisers, and the users are in fact the product they sell."

------
cmos
I have never joined facebook, and am thankful for this. But I was suckered
into joining linkedin, and when I saw they had uploaded my contacts list from
my gmail account, I had to leave.

Still not quite sure how they did that.

~~~
julio_the_squid
As you may know, they send all of your contacts who aren't members messages
saying '<person name> invited you to join their network on
(linkedin|facebook|twitter)'. Sometimes they even mail to 'remind' you again a
month or two later.

I don't think users necessarily realize these messages are being sent
ostensibly on their behalf. In my view these large, successful companies are
growing their user bases through spam.

~~~
cmos
I know - I had family members asking me 'what this linkedin thing was'.

That's when I quit.

(I don't remember giving them my password, however the link to send someone an
invite is actually a link to send EVERYONE and invite, and apparently that
includes the contact list they uploaded (or from my point of view, stole))

------
synnik
Here's the catch. I have gotten in touch with a lot of old friends via
Facebook. That is actually all I use it for - communications with old, non-
local friends. I fully admit that my communications with them is sporadic and
superficial, but it is better than nothing.

I'm cool with deleting my account - but not at the price of losing contact
with many "friends".

Is there a middle ground? Or a replacement service?

Maybe we can build an app to 1) Copy basic Facebook data, 2) Delete the
Facebook account, and 3) set you up on a new system that does respect privacy.

------
motters
The main issue from this and other similar articles about facebook which I've
read seems to be the lack of control that users have over how their
information is used and who it's given to. I still believe that the solution
to all of these problems would be an open source peer-to-peer version of
facebook, where you have complete ownership and control over what information
you make available and who gets to see it.

~~~
codemechanic
checkout <http://www.tonido.com>.

~~~
motters
Looks nice, but I'm not sure how open source this is. It appears to have an
SDK under Apache, but the rest is vague.

This also raises alarm bells:

[http://www.tonido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=548](http://www.tonido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=548)

If there's a version of this which is completely open source and on a plug,
I'd buy that as a facebook replacement.

------
emarcotte
How long before account deletion becomes an event for friends to view? "X is
deleting their Facebook account. Tell them to reconsider!"

~~~
philk
Never, because they wouldn't want the negative social proof that publishing
deletions would cause.

------
bonaldi
The whole privacy setup was never really about people's privacy -- it was
about keeping them locked into Facebook. I think in their bizarre eat-the-
world rampage thay've lost sight of this.

Which is fine, because with the new tools they're coming close to the position
where an app can get so much data that it'll be possible for a competitor
website to allow you to authorise it to import everything from Facebook --
friends list and all.

On that day there'll be a huge opportunity for someone to start a site
offering to be what Facebook used to be: a truly private yet still social
network.

A few pledges not to ever force you through hoops to try and retain your
privacy, to never make your baby pictures public by default, and to never
share your data, and there will be more than enough switchers to get the new
place up and running.

Can't wait, tbh.

------
terra_t
Well, Facebook has to do something to pay for the servers and the programmers.

They're estimating $1B or so in revenue for 2010, that sounds like a lot of
money, but that's an ARPU of about $2 or so -- most real businesses do 50
times that.

I don't begrudge them finding some way to get value out of their community,
otherwise they'll be a day when they can't afford to run it, or decide to
scale it down to something much smaller but much more profitable.

Any alternative offering is going to face the same problems; it's tough to
monetize social traffic; I know sites that have incredible user engagements
for communities in the 50k user range, but can't scratch together $800 a month
to pay for the servers, never mind to pay for anybody's time to develop and
maintain the system.

------
fnid2
If I had written this post, it would have been titled: Why I never created a
facebook account. Anyone who is crying now, should have known better.

------
eplanit
FB is ingenious in how it leverages three amazingly powerful forces:
Advertisers, individuals' Ego, and Group Psychnology (put more bluntly, herd
mentality).

FB and the Advertisers are harvesting value from the herd, day after day.
Brilliant (I'm not being facetious....this time).

~~~
SwellJoe
It _is_ brilliant, but that doesn't make it right. Facebook needs to
recalibrate its moral compass. There are a lot of really good people working
there, so I don't think it's an untenable problem; facebook hires good people
regularly (I don't think I know anyone at facebook that I don't consider a
good person, actually). But, there seems to be a disconnect about the badness
of chipping away at users privacy for the benefit of advertisers and facebook.
Facebook has definitely done enough things to make me mistrust them as a
company since I've been a user...so, I don't share a lot with facebook, and
I'm moving toward sharing less. My pictures are at flickr, and will remain
there, for example.

------
Xichekolas
That graph amuses me. Notice the benefit to users continues to climb, even if
the benefit to "facebook and other companies" happens to climb faster. So even
though it benefits you more and more, you will deny yourself that benefit
because it happens to help facebook too?

Of course, it's just a made-up graph, and his very first sentence implies the
line is really trending downward in his opinion, but I'm always intrigued when
an instance of the Ultimatum Game happens in real life:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game>

------
davidalln
I'm a little bit confused over what appears to be a mass hysteria about
privacy problems for Facebook. I guess I really don't mind if Facebook tells
company X that I listen to Modest Mouse, or lets advertisers know that I play
disc golf.

Facebook is still the best communication tool out there for sharing everything
(pictures, videos, messages, etc.). If, in return for using an excellent and
_free_ service, Facebook sends out a little bit of trivial information about
me then so be it. It's really not that different from AdWords.

~~~
joezydeco
Don't you think _you_ should be entitled to earn some of that money that
Facebook is making off of your information?

I think that's what pisses me off about FB the most. This entire website was
built on the backs of hundreds of millions of eager users. And sure, the users
get some benefits (meeting old friends, finding a new job), and some downsides
(affairs, posting that picture of you drunk for the boss to see). But all in
all, we've all made Zuckerberg a millionaire for doing very little, in the big
picture.

~~~
kmavm
"Don't you think you should be entitled to earn some of that money that
Facebook is making off of your information?"

Out of curiosity, do you hold AdSense to the same standard? After all, a pixel
and a cookie on 70% of websites by hit is being used to infer your interests,
location, demographics, and purchasing history, all so ads can be better
targeted at you. Why is it more shady for Facebook to do this with information
you explicitly provided, under terms that Facebook disclosed, than for Google
to do so with 99.9% of the web having no idea it's happening?

Sorry, I forgot: it's not evil when Google does it.

~~~
emarcotte
If I'm reading a magazine that has advertisements that is fine. They help
cover the costs of production. If I join a club and they sell my information
(where I live, who referred me, what actions I perform in the club) to another
company that is an entirely different matter.

Tracking via cookies/pixels,etc is getting pretty invasive too. When google
does it, it is just as bad. Look at Buzz, have we already forgotten the
outrage when it came out?

~~~
kmavm
"If I join a club and they sell my information (where I live, who referred me,
what actions I perform in the club) to another company that is an entirely
different matter."

I agree, and it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand: facebook does
not do this, and never has.

~~~
emarcotte
Perhaps I don't understand what they do then? If they sell screen time for
advertising and bundle it with my information how is that any different?

~~~
kmavm
Facebook sells targetted advertising: advertisers can direct ads at various
demographic groups, like age ranges, genders, and geographic locales.
Advertisers do not get any identifying data about users who see or click on
their ads as part of the package.

------
subbu
One of my friend is canceling his FB account this Saturday on similar grounds.
[http://kumarbhot.blogspot.com/2010/05/decision-to-move-
away-...](http://kumarbhot.blogspot.com/2010/05/decision-to-move-away-from-
facebook.html) FB is becoming the big brother of Internet day by day.

I left similar sounding comment on the blog above. I wonder why the article's
owner removed that comment! Looks like he hasn't accepted any comments. Why
enable have 'Leave a reply' if you don't want to accept any comments?

~~~
imperator
I was asleep when all of these replies came in. And I had it set for me to
approve all comments because I had been getting spam. I approved your reply
just now.

------
hipsterelitist
I like charts that don't have any numerical basis.

You've just arbitrarily illustrated their trend towards fewer privacy
restrictions in a way that will certainly sway people to your argument but
only represents your sentiments and nothing concrete about the actual
situation.

While I agree with your argument, this really bugs me, particularly in dealing
with the audience you've chosen to address and the false authority it might
lend you to those outside of it.

------
paulmeier
I also have a personal domain name, and have been rather disgusted with
Facebook's changes over the last few years.

I've thought of maybe doing a small redirection, in the style of
Class.cpp/ClassImpl.cpp, where my FB profile just says "see my 'real' profile
at myname.com," from where I can serve a static page with any information I
like.

This way I could still expose whatever data I like, on my terms, and keep all
the friend requests I've made.

------
rosshudgens
So you're mad they're basically turning from a free model to a freemium model?
The whole "privacy" thing is just ridiculous. When is Facebook's selling of
your info ever going to impair on your real life? The information they sell is
never going to lead to someone knocking on your door and calling your house.
It will impair your visual Facebook surfing experience, at worst. And impair
is a strong word.

Flipping out over some weird privacy details is ridiculous. There may be small
leaks, but they don't/won't last. Patch it up. Move on. Keep talking to your
one-off acquaintances.

We need to be OK with people making money. Facebook provided me (and you)
$1000s of dollars in value over the years. I have not given them a dime.
Facebook, gladly take 5-10% of your visual mind-share back. You earned it.

~~~
philk
This is rubbish. My privacy is important to me because I enjoy it. I enjoy
being able to do things/have thoughts/express opinions that are not
universally popular. I enjoy not having my interests analyzed by potential
employers. I enjoy not having my details handed out to marketers. I enjoy all
these things far more than having a free way to keep in contact with one-off
acquaintances.

