That is exactly the process I went through a few years ago and the manipulative messaging assured me that I was making the correct decision to get as far away from FB as possible.
Dr. Robert B. Cialdini, closed off Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion with the following paragraph about organizations that manipulate us and I completely believe Facebook is one of these organizations:
"I don’t consider myself pugnacious by nature, but I actively advocate such belligerent actions because in a way I am at war with the exploiters—we all are. It is important to recognize, however, that their motive for profit is not the cause for hostilities; that motive, after all, is something we each share to an extent. The real treachery, and the thing we cannot tolerate, is any attempt to make their profit in a way that threatens the reliability of our shortcuts. The blitz of modern daily life demands that we have faithful shortcuts, sound rules of thumb to handle it all. These are not luxuries any longer; they are out-and-out necessities that figure to become increasingly vital as the pulse of daily life quickens. That is why we should want to retaliate whenever we see someone betraying one of our rules of thumb for profit. We want that rule to be as effective as possible. But to the degree that its fitness for duty is regularly undercut by the tricks of a profiteer, we naturally will use it less and will be less able to cope efficiently with the decisional burdens of our day. We cannot allow that without a fight. The stakes have gotten too high."
The company seems to have a strong culture of gaslighting and manipulating users. When I saw that screen, there were people there that definitely wouldn't miss me and who would probably be appalled that their identities were being used in that way.
When other people quit Facebook, it's likely that your photo is being presented to other users (who you may not really know) telling them that you will miss them. It's terrible.
I deleted Instagram 6 months ago. I recently came into contact with somebody in person, and they told me that they were aware I was deleting social media because Instagram told them to re-invite me back to the platform. It was this moment that I realized you're never truly out of the system. What is the point of me deleting my Instagram if I am still showing up on people's application?
While I agree that they shouldn't be using you information that way, they do need to keep a record that you previously existed in the system. If they don't then a different problem arises. Someone could sign up again pretending to be you and then cause real harm to you through that impersonation.
Are you saying that as soon as I signed up to IG with an email address and started posting pictures, IG then knew who I was to the extent that they can prevent impersonation after I delete my account? I'm skeptical.
They do not need to keep a record that I previously existed in their system. There is literally nothing other than marketing/bizdev that derives value from this.
Are you deleting ig for your own benefit or for benefit of others? If it bothers you a lot - talk to other people about it and explain your reasons. If not - stop worrying about it. There are much more important things to do. For example spending time with your friends and loved ones or doing things you like.
The point is - how does Instagram know you should be re-invited if you are deleted? If you are really deleted, they shouldn't know you were ever a member.
I think OP's point was that the message is specifically to re-invite and is different from normal sell-out-your-friends-to-us-so-we-can-get-better-valuation. This means that, at the very least, IG retains some sort of marker/metadata about you after account deletion.
"Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity."
"Fear of missing out is a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent"
I'm not sure if that's exactly it. It isn't quite coercion. Facebook's tone and methods of communication often seem more like a manipulative but charming narcissist who is insidiously trying to rearrange your reality. You think you quit the site and suddenly they are back at your front door edging even deeper into your life than before, using every manipulative trick possible. Maybe there needs to be a new term for it.
> It's a form of gaslighting. They are manipulating each of your realities in unethical ways.
This is the third time you’ve used the term in this subthread. It appeared in your original comment and now twice more. I am reminded of when a media outlet deliberately associates a politician with a given phrase. It looks like an attempt at marketing.
I'm not sure what other term to use. Whenever that site communicated with me I got the impression that I was talking with a manipulative gaslighter.
It doesn't necessarily result in one questioning their own sanity, but it's definitely an attempt to manipulate the realities of the users by showing them different information that result in certain behaviors. One person is shown one thing that makes them behave a certain way. The other person is shown the results of the behaviors, assuming a different cause of the behaviors, which is not exactly the reality.
None of those people I was shown will miss me. They have no idea that their likenesses are being used to try to manipulate me. Very few people know that it is happening at all, because each person sees a different thing.
I think of it as "perception fencing", where barriers and openings are created to manipulate the information you consume and the behaviors that result, but I'm not sure that people would know exactly what I'm referring to if I use that term. If you have a better term, feel free to suggest it.
This is something I've seen across the board, and have always been hesitant to say something lest I come off as "that crazy guy who feels bad because his cloud console has a frowny face next to the fact that something broke." (as a tongue-in-cheek example.) There are certainly other products I've used in recent memory that played the "we'll miss you, don't go!" game on uninstalling, but I can't pull their names off the top of my head, and I don't recall them being QUITE as blatant as to use pictures of your friends.
The amount of anthropomorphism and insertion of emotional levers into tech tools/products is something I've always had a very visceral reaction against, but at least for consumer products (and unfortunately, increasingly in the SaaS space as well) it seems to be gaining traction. I have no doubt that it _works_ from a psychological perspective, but I wonder if I'm alone in feeling offput as a user. Clearly alone enough that it doesn't move the needle in terms of efficacy, unfortunately. (unfortunately in the context of whatever weird emotional pathology I've apparently developed have with my tooling :) )
The company is rotten to its foundations. Even the core mission is a terrible idea. Connecting all the world's people already exists -- it's called the WWW.
Every time Facebook, the company, communicated with me, I felt like I was dealing with a manipulative gaslighter. I'm glad that it is no longer a part of my life.
This is just being atavistic for no reason. The telephone system is a horrible UX. I hardly ever use Facebook, but I'm definitely not replacing it with the telephone.
I just deleted LinkedIn as well, they flash this "All this people will miss you" and then show all the "endorsements" messages, things like: "Paulo is among the best engineers I've worked with".
OTOH sometimes I will be like "Huh, I haven't seen a post from so-and-so for quite some time now... I wonder how they are doing? What the... all trace of them is now gone? Oh well..."
My experience of deleting my Facebook account back in 2009 (and reading this the process hasn't changed) is once I finally deleted it, it was stolen by someone else within a few weeks (I'm guessing automated / bots trying to steal identities). I have a very unique name which, as far as I'm aware, is the only one in the world. What caused me to notice was friends still on Facebook who were getting this fake profile recommended as a possible connection.
Facebook ignored requests I made (submitted without having an account) that the profile was fake. I also had friends report the account for me but it still exists today - this is the fake account https://m.facebook.com/harry.fuecks - thats not my picture.
So beware - it may be more pragmatic just to deactivate your account than delete. That means Facebook gets to keep your data but at least you don't risk identify theft.
Ultimately think it's going to take regulation to solve this problem in general - it's not in Facebooks interest to make account deletion painless.
Good thing about GDPR you should be able to ask them to delete all data, while still leave your account there, deactivated, so others can't grab it. That's what my plan of action is - anyone tried that? Is it possible?
The username should just be permanently taken off the available list. This is done with other sites, I don't see why it goes back into the pool once used.
I’ve been wondering: Does FB really delete data, or do they not somehow keep it and just flag it as deleted? So they are able to use it for analytics and keep my ad profile sharp..
I hope GDPR will shed some light on this, I guess they will not take the risk going forward.
Fun fact I experienced: if you get banned for anything, there is absolutely no way to delete your account.
(It was a test account at a time I didn't even have a personal account yet. I uploaded very mild nudity¹ as a profile pic and had a friend flag me on purpose)
This is true and also illegal and against Facebook's TOS - they state regardless of any of that you can control your data. I've been complaining about FB for years and maybe its time they will start listening. Instead I write long emails that will have a guaranteed response in 24 hours and there is NEVER A RESPONSE.
A few years ago my account got disabled. When I tried to sign in it'd show a message pointing me to their Help Center if I wanted more info about why my account was banned.
After a few months passed, I tried to sign in again and it just didn't recognize my email address.
I'd assume they "remove" disabled accounts after a few months based on my experience.
Interesting, my account got disabled a few months ago and radio silence from them on why or what (appeals process seems a black hole).
In light of recent activities I’d like them to delete all data they have on me but since I’m not an EU citizen unfortunately I don’t have the GDPR to force them to do so.
Biggest problem to me is if you are a login with facebook user (or were ages ago), which is highly likely since many websites pushed it hard at the time, some like spotify requiring it. If you log back into spotify while its still deleting, even to move your account to a regular spotify account, it permanently reactivates your facebook account. You have to do all the cleanup, app deletion, etc beforehand.
If you delete your facebook account and had your spotify account associated with facebook, now you cannot login into spotify anymore with your email account. It happened to me, it's a very stupid thing, and as it seems, they (spotify) can't or wont do anyting about it..
I use Spotify and never connected it to Facebook. It's not actually required. They just make the "social" features of Spotify super hard to use if you don't connect to Facebook, which... doesn't matter.
You an migrate Spotify out of the login-with-Facebook thing. Make a new account (or I think they can do that for you too) and then ask them to migrate your stuff to the new account. They migrate most things including your followers but not followees [word?].
I believe what they meant is that you have to "Login with Facebook"and migrating your account before deactivating Facebook, not that they didn't know how to migrate Spotify.
I deactivated my Facebook before, and I had to go through each individual app and either migrate the account to a native login or completely revoke access from the app, if I didn't want them to undo the deactivation when I logged in later, Spotify included.
I feel like they should put some sort of separation between the "Login with Facebook" feature and the Facebook app itself, so that logging in personally reactivates the account but logging in via an app simply verifies the credentials.
No, they allow migrating, but doing so will cause facebook to reactivate your account. Basically, using any 'login with facebook' service after deactivating your facebook account will reactivate you.
I’ve noticed that any online game these days (Fortnite, PUBG, as examples) either want you to link your Facebook account. With some that seems to be the only way to not have a guest account.
Wow, I had no idea there a buried option like that to really delete it.
Several years ago I read an article about how savvy teenagers and college students were calling account deactivation "Super Logout", since it was well known that deactivation was non-binding and immediately reversible at any time. If you were going to be away from your phone or computer for anything more than a few hours you would Super Logout and not have to worry about potentially embarrassing wall posts, tagged photos, tagged comments, unwelcome messages, etc.. It was all about having full control of who interacts with your account and when. I thought it was quite brilliant and I totally get why you would want to do that in the fast-paced social world of a teenager. Ever since I read that I've always laughed at people saying "I'm going to delete my account", thinking they were really deleting it. (I bet no more than a fraction, if any, ever dug up the full deletion option.) People think they are "deleting" their account while kids are literally using "deletion" as an advanced feature of the platform.
There's also no mention in the article about what Facebook does with all of the data you've surrendered to them while using the platform. Do they actually remove your history of likes and your node in the social graph?
I'm very doubtful they voluntarily delete your data.
They likely never delete anything. They simply transform you back into a "shadow profile" and keep monetizing everything they know, but conceal the data from you and the rest of the public.
I believe they always retain all data forever, as a trade secret. They don't need no stinking laws to do that.
This is a component of not requiring users to pay for premium service. When you "create an account" you're simply "activating/linking/merging" one of your shadow profiles to your IRL identity (or not-so-IRL personas), which (possibly) has always existed (long before you showed up), claiming it as yours, and publicly exposing whatever Facebook is willing to show you that they know about you/that persona/whoever.
> They likely never delete anything. They simply transform you back into a "shadow profile" and keep monetizing everything they know, but conceal the data from you and the rest of the public.
If they stick to those habits with European users post May 25, GDPR will mess them up pretty bad. It would require just one whistle blower to expose their wrongdoings.
Always wondered if its worth trying to delete all your data before deleting your facebook- or if deleting both does the same thing. They're supposed to delete data in 30 days but in the 2012-2013 days people proved the links to content were still up and photos/etc were all up.
Does anyone think these services actually delete all of your data, or just use a "deleted" flag on the database, keeping all of your info making it look like you're "deleted" but not allowing you to use it any longer? My vote is the 2nd one.
The mobile site makes this way, way, way easier. You literally just have to enter your password and the deed is done: https://m.facebook.com/account/delete
I just reactivated my deactivated account to delete it.
How do I know if my account is deleted? I did it years ago but every few months I get a suspect email about, "looks like you're having trouble logging in. Let us help you get back on Facebook." Which makes me think it's not actually deleted.
Even though this user says he couldn't find the link to delete your account, it is on two of his screen shots with the label "Request account deletion"
Edit: I guess the text above makes this link confusing. Go FB.
Yeah I think you might be correct - I don't have a FB account so I couldn't test it, but it was strange the author didn't mention this. at least. I guess I retract my note.
I deleted (not deactivated) a Facebook account that I had from high school to sophomore year of college.
A year or two later I made a new one and didn't fill out anything except my name and didn't add any friends (yet). Almost immediately facebook started suggesting friends, groups, etc that existed on my deleted account.
tl;dr nothing is every really "deleted," just hidden
Yeah. The authors don't want you to delete your facebook. They want you to share their article on your facebook (it's right there at the top of the page!).
The people/person who wrote the article seem desperate for you to not follow the directions. They want you to go to Facebook and starting sharing and liking content right away. They just want your money.
I went so far as to edit all comments give blank, remove all likes and untag all images before deleting. This was years ago, but I’m glad others are seeing the same issues and reacting appropriately.
Thanks for this post. I thought I deleted my Facebook four years ago only to read this and find out it still existed. IIRC back then it said something about deletion after a set period of inactivity.
I don't think Facebook is being ethical by making people wait to delete their account. Thought experiment:
Suppose John owns a room. John's room is occupied at full capacity, 24/7. People mingle in the room, sometimes they trade with each other. Assume John is never present in the room at any time. John decides to install a camera and microphone in the room. John analyzes the data in order help increase the quantity of trades in the room, through which John makes a considerable commission. Later, someone asks him to delete the data he has on them. John says he will only delete the data after 90 days, and if the person takes a step in the room within 14 days, they will not have their data deleted.
So why are John's friends using the living room so frequently yet without having any contact with him? Maybe you find that question to be pedantic given the bigger picture you're ostensibly addressing. But trying to imagine the answers would make it obvious why your hypothetical situation doesn't really apply to reality.
For starters, your scenario involves a surveillance camera, but in the next sentence, you ask us to imagine that the friends haven't given any permission. Permission for what exactly?
> So why are John's friends using the living room so frequently yet without having any contact with him?
Good question. I rent out a house with 100% capacity, and I haven't set foot in the house in the past year at all. It's managed remotely by me. There are living areas where people can hang out. This is also what John does.
> you ask us to imagine that the friends haven't given any permission. Permission for what exactly?
I have edited that part out and made things more concise, thanks for catching that. John records his living room and uses the data in order to sell products to the people who happen to be there. Later, people found out and have politely asked him to delete any video and audio involving them.
Side note: I feel John's implementation isn't important here, so I've intentionally left it out. Perhaps he earns a profit by having buyers and sellers meet, serendipitously, in his living room. For example, he may learn that Alice is a laptop seller and Bob is a laptop buyer. Assume John can influence the traffic in his living room for the sake of the gedanken.
One weakness of the way you’ve described this: John isn’t getting a commission on trades between the minglers, he gets a commission by the things he blares on the TVs in the room.
Aren't advertisers fundamentally just another form of mingler? One key difference I can think of is that the friend, posting an innocent picture of their new Adidas, is not paid any sort of commission for influencing potentially hundreds of people.
I deleted Facebook before it was cool. They wouldn't stop sending me "Won't you please come back" emails until I made a formal complaint about the spam to the Australian Communications and Media Authority. No more emails.
I was on there just a few days ago to find out what my elderly aunts were up to. Crickets. They hadn't posted anything for three years.
Dr. Robert B. Cialdini, closed off Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion with the following paragraph about organizations that manipulate us and I completely believe Facebook is one of these organizations:
"I don’t consider myself pugnacious by nature, but I actively advocate such belligerent actions because in a way I am at war with the exploiters—we all are. It is important to recognize, however, that their motive for profit is not the cause for hostilities; that motive, after all, is something we each share to an extent. The real treachery, and the thing we cannot tolerate, is any attempt to make their profit in a way that threatens the reliability of our shortcuts. The blitz of modern daily life demands that we have faithful shortcuts, sound rules of thumb to handle it all. These are not luxuries any longer; they are out-and-out necessities that figure to become increasingly vital as the pulse of daily life quickens. That is why we should want to retaliate whenever we see someone betraying one of our rules of thumb for profit. We want that rule to be as effective as possible. But to the degree that its fitness for duty is regularly undercut by the tricks of a profiteer, we naturally will use it less and will be less able to cope efficiently with the decisional burdens of our day. We cannot allow that without a fight. The stakes have gotten too high."