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I keep wanting to pull the trigger. Mr Doctorow's article is perhaps the last straw... Q: How do I permanently delete my account? A: https://www.facebook.com/h

I keep wanting to pull the trigger. Mr Doctorow's article is perhaps the last straw... Q: How do I permanently delete my account? A: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674 https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674

32qwef 8y ago
Don't know how much you use FB but I highly recommend it. When I got rid of mine, all I lost was status updates from people who weren't really my friends to begin with. Your close friends will stick by you and your social life will grow richer, with more face-to-face meetings. Quitting Facebook is great.
- tapoxi 8y ago
  My issue with deleting Facebook is that a lot of services depend on it for authentication and friend/contact discovery. I wish there were an open standard for a social graph.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    Apart from developing Facebook integrations for Work, I have never once used Facebook to sign into a site and do not allow anything to rummage through my contacts and "discover" things. So I'm confused as to why this is a necessity. What services do you use that won't function without your Facebook account?
    - hluska 8y ago
      I once had a conversation with a junior developer who told me that he would rather die than give up Tinder. To this day, I honestly don't think he was joking...
      - paulie_a 8y ago
        I am going to assume a junior developer is younger in age so it isn't that surprising that getting laid is a high priority.
        hluska 8y ago
        True, and I don't think you can use Tinder without a Facebook account. :)
  - 32qwef 8y ago
    There should be, I agree. The best features of facebook are events, and friend recommendations. It would be great if we had an open standard for the social graph, and then other companies could make services like events or friend discovery, and you could pick and choose which ones you subscribed to. As for authentication, thankfully most sites let you register an account with them. It's a little inconvenient, but with a password manager it's simple. Still, I wish OpenID was more widespread.
  - testvox 8y ago
    I don't think too many services have a hard dependency on FB. I haven't had an account for years and while many services do their best to convince you to use FB for auth I've only run into a few very early stage projects that absolutely requires it.
datalus 8y ago
I can confirm, deleting FB was a good thing overall, but YMMV. I was largely using it as an event planner, but found that I could just subscribe via email lists or other ways for the venues I cared about keeping up with. It also helps that I don't know a majority of my outer circle's daily status updates and when I see them at mutual engagements like birthday parties or house warmings, I'm more interested in talking to them and catching up.
karmelapple 8y ago
I’d like to, but it’s a valuable way to get my ideas out to friends and family and to have discussions. It’s more valuable and more personal than, say, a blog, because: * my post + all the comments show up in the same UI where people go to see dumb videos or cute photos of friends’ families * I can share a link or thought, and have more follow up with these friends and family, because they know me on a personal level, and know that the conversation is limited to people who at least somewhat know me, rather than all manner of internet trolls. They trust me more than random other person on the Internet who might share the exact same information... just like I trust them more than random people on the internet. If Facebook is going to keep a shadow profile on me anyway, I want to get a little something out of it. Whether they should be allowed to keep the shadow profile on me or not, though, is a different question altogether. And I think only legislation could decide that effectively.
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  >I’d like to, but it’s a valuable way to get my ideas out to friends and family and to have discussions. My friends and family aren't interested in most the stuff I'm interested in. I'll call and text them, talk to them about our lives. I'll post my interests in places where people who share them can consume. I mostly just felt paralyzed by the platform. Not wanting to put personal info because it would be used to build a profile on me, and not wanting to interact with a lot of media because it would then use that as an excuse to promote it to my friends and family.
bsenftner 8y ago
Yeah, you'll wait till it's too late. Just freaking quit. You'll find how to reach those that matter to you anyway. And those contacts will be more meaningful, because you're not on FB, where communications have degenerated to less than authentic.
flowless 8y ago
Just did it after 2 years of ignoring it - had to accept GDPR stuff and face recognition to get in and be able to hit delete. Feels good anyway.

32qwef 8y ago

Don't know how much you use FB but I highly recommend it. When I got rid of mine, all I lost was status updates from people who weren't really my friends to begin with. Your close friends will stick by you and your social life will grow richer, with more face-to-face meetings. Quitting Facebook is great.

tapoxi 8y ago
My issue with deleting Facebook is that a lot of services depend on it for authentication and friend/contact discovery. I wish there were an open standard for a social graph.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  Apart from developing Facebook integrations for Work, I have never once used Facebook to sign into a site and do not allow anything to rummage through my contacts and "discover" things. So I'm confused as to why this is a necessity. What services do you use that won't function without your Facebook account?
  - hluska 8y ago
    I once had a conversation with a junior developer who told me that he would rather die than give up Tinder. To this day, I honestly don't think he was joking...
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      I am going to assume a junior developer is younger in age so it isn't that surprising that getting laid is a high priority.
      - hluska 8y ago
        True, and I don't think you can use Tinder without a Facebook account. :)
- 32qwef 8y ago
  There should be, I agree. The best features of facebook are events, and friend recommendations. It would be great if we had an open standard for the social graph, and then other companies could make services like events or friend discovery, and you could pick and choose which ones you subscribed to. As for authentication, thankfully most sites let you register an account with them. It's a little inconvenient, but with a password manager it's simple. Still, I wish OpenID was more widespread.
- testvox 8y ago
  I don't think too many services have a hard dependency on FB. I haven't had an account for years and while many services do their best to convince you to use FB for auth I've only run into a few very early stage projects that absolutely requires it.

datalus 8y ago

I can confirm, deleting FB was a good thing overall, but YMMV. I was largely using it as an event planner, but found that I could just subscribe via email lists or other ways for the venues I cared about keeping up with. It also helps that I don't know a majority of my outer circle's daily status updates and when I see them at mutual engagements like birthday parties or house warmings, I'm more interested in talking to them and catching up.

karmelapple 8y ago

I’d like to, but it’s a valuable way to get my ideas out to friends and family and to have discussions. It’s more valuable and more personal than, say, a blog, because: * my post + all the comments show up in the same UI where people go to see dumb videos or cute photos of friends’ families * I can share a link or thought, and have more follow up with these friends and family, because they know me on a personal level, and know that the conversation is limited to people who at least somewhat know me, rather than all manner of internet trolls. They trust me more than random other person on the Internet who might share the exact same information... just like I trust them more than random people on the internet. If Facebook is going to keep a shadow profile on me anyway, I want to get a little something out of it. Whether they should be allowed to keep the shadow profile on me or not, though, is a different question altogether. And I think only legislation could decide that effectively.

TACIXAT 8y ago
>I’d like to, but it’s a valuable way to get my ideas out to friends and family and to have discussions. My friends and family aren't interested in most the stuff I'm interested in. I'll call and text them, talk to them about our lives. I'll post my interests in places where people who share them can consume. I mostly just felt paralyzed by the platform. Not wanting to put personal info because it would be used to build a profile on me, and not wanting to interact with a lot of media because it would then use that as an excuse to promote it to my friends and family.

bsenftner 8y ago

Yeah, you'll wait till it's too late. Just freaking quit. You'll find how to reach those that matter to you anyway. And those contacts will be more meaningful, because you're not on FB, where communications have degenerated to less than authentic.

flowless 8y ago

Just did it after 2 years of ignoring it - had to accept GDPR stuff and face recognition to get in and be able to hit delete. Feels good anyway.