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FYI here’s a link to delete your Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account Earlier I had “dea
by majestik 9y ago
FYI here’s a link to delete your Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account
Earlier I had “deactivated” my account thinking it would get deleted, but then I learned I have to visit this page to actually delete it.
- samthecoy 9y agoDoes doing this also delete Messenger? I'm aware there's been a little bit of decoupling of the two services in recent times.
- Bajeezus 9y agoDeactivating your account does nothing to Messenger, not sure about deleting.
- ktta 9y agoYes, unfortunately.
- crowbahr 9y agoIf you're deleting Facebook and not getting rid of messenger you're missing the point. Messenger is more invasive in many ways, even if it doesn't track your web activity as much.
- ktta 9y agoInvasiveness of Messenger is much more bearable because it lets me communicate with my Facebook friends, which I see as much more important benefit compared to a time sink newsfeed. Also, using Messenger Lite (Android only) is a vastly better experience than the main Messenger app.
- swebs 9y agoSlimSocial also supports Messenger and is a good alternative to the Facebook app in general. You still have the same privacy issues regarding data on Facebook's servers, but at least this app lacks the client-side analytics.
- deevolution 9y agoI also use messenger to communicate with friends, but i think im going to make the effort to convince them to move to a privacy focused and non data mining platform, such as telegram.
- fenwick67 9y agoMaybe I'm missing something, but why not just use sms?
- alphydan 9y agoThe thing you are missing is that many of us have friends all over the world. And international SMS quickly gets expensive. (Also, most people are not on signal / your-favorite-messaging-app) ...
- s0rce 9y agoMy friends use messenger and getting them to change is hard, not sure why they migrated to it in the first place...
- reitanqild 9y agoGroup chat doesn't exist in sms. Also it is quite old fashioned and painfully limited wrt/attachments. And expensive for thise with families/friends abroad.
- steaknsteak 9y agoPeople make group chats in FB messenger. If you don't have messenger, you don't get to be in the group chat.
- mschuster91 9y ago
- mistermann 9y agoIf I have messenger (edit: Messenger Lite) on my phone, is it tracking my location the same as the facebook app would? I usually have location services turned off but I don't imagine that makes much difference. (I bet that's a stupid question)
- marvin 9y ago...and does it actually delete your data from Facebook's servers? I.e. all their records of your messaging history, all your photos, their ability to make a future third party face-recognize you on the street, their knowledge of who you find attractive, what party you are likely to vote for, what crimes you are likely to commit, what you like to spend money on and so on and so forth?
- ellisv 9y agoI don't think so. I've kept my account primarily because I assume they'd have a shadow account on me. Just because you don't have a FB account doesn't mean they don't have data on you.
- ttul 9y agoYes I believe so, although they say it may take a while for various batch processes to get rid of all traces - for instance tape backup.
- mercer 9y agoI've kept an account partly for that reason. I'm wondering how much GDPR might change that though. Can anyone with more expertise on the matter weigh in? Assuming I could be relatively certain that my data will be deleted, I'd probably keep a bare account but delete most of what they have.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- andrewprock 9y agoI would expect that much of your data would remain, though specific portions would be anonymized. I would guess that photos, the contents of posts, etc. would vanish (eventually), but the account id and metadata, connections to other accounts, events, and the like, would remain in perpetuity.
- potench 9y agoWhat happens to your Spotify account if you delete/deactivate your facebook account? I made the mistake of linking the 2 when I first joined Spotify in my haste to listen to music.
- crftr 9y agohttps://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Tutorial-How-to-Disconnect-Spotify-from-Facebook/td-p/247266 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Tutorial-How-to-Di... You will need to contact Spotify support if you deactivated Facebook prior to disconnecting from Spotify.
- SyneRyder 9y agoLooking through my email archives, I see I had to contact Spotify support via email and ask them to delete the Spotify account I'd created via FB, so that I could signup again via an email login. However! Spotify support were great, they offered to migrate all my playlists from the old account over to the new account. No guarantees they could do that now with everyone deleting their FB accounts at once, but I was really impressed with the friendliness of their service. They pretty much created a customer for life out of me from that support experience.
- arianvanp 9y agoYou will need to call Spotify. I was not able to cancel my Spotify subscription anymore after I deleted Facebook. So I had to call and they had to manually transfer all my playlists to a new account
- ClassyJacket 9y agoYou're not the only one - for years Spotify ONLY let you sign in with Facebook. And you aren't allowed to unlink them either. I had to just start a new Spotify account and Los everything.
- peterwwillis 9y agoThe problem is, how do you find out how many sites you currently use Facebook Connect for, and get non-FB Connect logins for? Until recently I thought Lyft made Facebook login mandatory, I'm not sure if that's still the case.
- mcherm 9y agoI use Lyft, and I have never used Facebook to log into ANYTHING. So I don't know if they support dropping an existing Facebook login, but they certainly support other authentication methods. (Mine is username-password.)
- sykh 9y agoI don’t have a Facebook account and use Lyft.
- snowwrestler 9y agoI think if you look under "Apps" in your Facebook account settings, you can see a list of websites where you're logged in with Facebook.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mieseratte 9y ago> Earlier I had “deactivated” my account thinking it would get deleted, but then I learned I have to visit this page to actually delete it. Thank you for pointing this out. I, too, was under the impression that "Deactivate" was the delete option, especially considering they place a "Delete" segment right above it but make it sound as if that is about handling your account after death. Some definite dark patterns in the UI right there.
- abritinthebay 9y agoIt's both a dark pattern and a connivence - there are a bunch of people who will deactivate their account and then start it up again. Having the data there to just... rehydrate the account makes that re-onboarding much more seamless. But yeah, there's a sneaking dark side to how they use that feature.
- smokeyj 9y agoI thought my account was deleted for years. I randomly started getting FB emails about a month ago. A few days ago I was emailed about being tagged in a dead friends picture. Bye Zuck, I hate you at a personal level.
- marknadal 9y agoDeleting Facebook now, without good alternatives, might cause more problems than good. Instead, we should first model what the future of social networking should look like: https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotional-intelligence-e45dcddb1bdb https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotiona... Then I am curious to hear people's thoughts on: - Mastodon - Secure Scuttlebutt - Steemit etc.
- glibgil 9y ago> Deleting Facebook now, without good alternatives, might cause more problems than good It's safe to do it now. I got you covered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk http://www.spacex.com/ http://www.spacex.com/ https://www.tesla.com/ https://www.tesla.com/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aaron-lebo 9y agoWhat's this mean? Really rich dude did something, you should too? Is it not "safe" to do something until the guy people worship does something? Have respect for yourself.
- ModernMech 9y agoParent is saying that the Facebook alternative is a personal/corporate website.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoMaybe (though it's vague enough to mean anything), but it's definitely of the Musk does it, you can too variety. Those alternatives never went anywhere for the past 14 years. Musk is late to the game, what's his wiki prove? The "I've got new respect for Musk" mantra (actually stated in this thread) when he's doing what other people have been doing for a decade, only difference is, he's rich, is very follow the crowd for something which prides itself on individuality like HN.
- bogomipz 9y agoNote, if your account is already deactivated when you try to delete it you will again be asked for your password despite being already logged in. You will also be asked to complete a CAPTCHA. This will invariably result in the error message: "Incorrect email/password combination"[1] This is despite being logged in to FB with the same password. The fix is to change your password, log out and log back in with the changed password. You will then be able to delete your account without issue. Maybe the author could add this information to their post? People have been asking on the FB help forum for years about how to resolve this error. FB refuses to answer anyone asking for help with this error. I'm guessing their failure to mention this or address this is quite intentional. Oh and the audio versions of the CAPTCHAs are all completely unintelligible gibberish. I'm guessing this is intentional as well. [1] https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=401805653540273 https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=4018056...
- Method-X 9y agoDark UX
- underwires 9y agoI had disabled my account a week ago, not realizing there was a separate delete option, then deleted it a couple days ago. I didn't run into this issue; I signed into my "disabled" account first, then went to the delete link and it worked.
- ballenf 9y agoIt's a strange bug for sure. Friend I helped had to change their password 2-3 times before it would go through. We typed it very carefully. Tried copying from notepad, the same copying used to reset the password. It indeed felt like Hotel California, as someone below compared.
- ghfbjdhhv 9y agoInteresting... completely unrelated to the recent issues, a few months ago, I wanted to log in to Facebook from a mobile browser so I could follow a link without installing the app. I also ran into a challenging captcha and a page saying my account had been “locked”, but I was still able to log in. After logging in, I received a phone call from Palo Alto. When I let the call go to voicemail, it left a message consisting only of a recorded voice saying “goodbye”. Perhaps this was some poorly-implemented two-factor auth, but in context, I felt like Facebook was intentionally making the experience of using a mobile browser unpleasant to encourage use of the app. Sounds like the delete your account page has similar “issues”. From my experience optimizing signup funnels, it made me wonder if somebody is doing that work in reverse here. Are they getting a bonus based on what percentage of people abandon the account deletion process? Maybe I’m just being paranoid, and optimizing those flows is simply not a high priority. But for a tech-focused company that tends to operate at a pretty high level, it felt like they are actively making things more difficult. Like this was the shittiest experience bright minds could come up with.
- scardine 9y agoBye FB, and while I'm at it, so long LinkedIn. Good riddance. For too many years I kept a page at popular social networks even if they added negative value for me. I don't know, what if someone place a page there impersonating me? Well, I don't care anymore.
- justboxing 9y agoFacebook is like Hotel California. > You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!"
- spondyl 9y agoFor anyone staying because of Facebook Messenger, it's not obvious but you can tie Messenger to your phone number instead of having a Facebook account. It still requires you to create a new account (that has an account key you can automically store in Google Drive) but it works. The downsides are that messenger.com doesn't support this so you can only access messenger on your phone and that Facebook still has an idea of who you are.
- thorin_2 9y agoDoes FB put in writing somewhere that deleting your account will result in all your data, including inferences and profiling data derived from data you and others have provided will be actually purged from their systems? Or do they just delete what little personal data you may have provided directly, but could still reconstitute virtually everything about you, whether anonymized or re-linked upon request or payment by a third party?
- incompatible 9y agoSearch for "deleted" in https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy. The bit you'd be worried about is: Keep in mind that information that others have shared about you is not part of your account and will not be deleted when you delete your account.
- joering2 9y agoWhich is wrong obviously. I should be able to purge all info about me from the site. Its not hard - after all, people tag users they talk about.
- incompatible 9y agoIt's not obvious to me that other people's comments should be deleted or modified because they mention you. What if they mention you again after you've left?