[HN Gopher] How to delete your Facebook account
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How to delete your Facebook account
Author : battle-racket
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-01-09 21:19 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| zjp wrote:
| I did after yesterday's story. It's only a matter of time before
| you don't even have to interact with their AI tools to kick off
| them showing you yourself in generated content. No thanks! They
| make it damn obscure to find too. I had to click a direct link to
| the option from their help pages.
| naturalpb wrote:
| Funny, I just signed up for a Facebook account this week after
| the news,having deleted mine in 2017. In my opinion, they are
| taking a step in the right direction. Clearly others disagree,
| which is their right. What isn't someone's right is to dictate
| truth, which is what Facebook will ostensibly do less of. Bravo
| juujian wrote:
| Is this some kind of really meta joke or irony?
| kps wrote:
| > _meta_ joke
|
| Is this some kind of...
| lawlessone wrote:
| That's great, what was it you were worried you couldn't say
| there?
| rvnx wrote:
| Depending on the website owners or influences there are
| always things you cannot freely say. Even here on this forum.
| Pedro_Ribeiro wrote:
| And what is that? Maybe I'm not deep enough into HN to know
| about this.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Eh, I'm just assuming OP holds views that a lot of people
| here disagree here with (thus end up getting downvoted),
| and writes it off as "not allowed to say it" here. That's
| usually the gist of why people complain about freedom of
| speech nowadays, regardless of their ideology. Yes, I
| understand there are billions of exceptions, and I
| understand how users get banned for "wrong think". But
| that happens literally everywhere, and all you have to do
| is to be loud enough to piss of the right people.
|
| Everyone wants to be liked, and search for the venues
| where they can express their views where they would be a
| part of majority. Basically the reason why people skew
| towards echo-chambers, in real and digital life.
| rvnx wrote:
| One example from yesterday of "what can't be said":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630197
|
| or
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630067
|
| Or let's say, it technically can be said, but you get
| somehow punished (flagged, downvoted, etc) so you learn
| not to do it anymore. The incentive is simply not there.
|
| There is a logic, the "community" flags to protect their
| own interests (financial investments, friends working
| there, etc).
|
| And since the community is from the same group, they
| defend the same interests.
|
| The more freely we can talk about a topic, the more
| genuine and thought-provoking interactions it can create
| (without intentionally hurting the others obviously).
|
| If you filter too much, you get this LinkedIn-bullshit
| and it makes a message board super boring, as you live in
| a closed bubble.
| rozap wrote:
| Please enlighten us.
| naturalpb wrote:
| I consume on social platforms, rather than creating. I was
| growingly aware of the platform's bias on the content I saw
| and opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it,
| anyway). The changes this week are a step in the right
| direction as other viewpoints are more possible, let alone
| tolerated.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| > opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it,
| anyway)
|
| I'm genuinely curious to know what about reality warrants
| "as close as one can get to it". In my experience, every
| time I close the browser and step outside I'm generally
| convinced that what I'm experiencing is real.
| naturalpb wrote:
| Precisely. As humans, we use our senses to discover what
| is true and to what degree. When online, there's always a
| reality distortion machine running; the question is how
| much distortion is taking place
| bobjordan wrote:
| After living in China for 10 years and experiencing true
| suppression of freedom of speech, the desire of many here in
| America to silence others in the name of curbing
| "misinformation" is wild to me. I have no desire to replicate
| what they have in China here in America. Free speech is a
| precious thing on this planet. The only acceptable solution to
| speech one doesn't like or agree with is more free speech.
| Silencing people that you don't agree with is not something
| anyone should support.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Best not to confuse the right to "free speech," with others
| publishing it electronically.
| brink wrote:
| It's the cult of superficial thought. Hate speech is a small
| price to pay for the fight against censorship. But there is a
| not-insignificant amount of people that look at the hate
| speech, think it should be censored because it's bad, and
| literally think no further about the potential consequences
| of censorship.
|
| Yes, lies are bad and dangerous, but censorship is much worse
| and far more dangerous.
| petargyurov wrote:
| This is a very myopic take on things.
|
| > dictate truth
|
| What about the damage done by the millions of lies that people
| post on the platform to spread their bigoted agendas? What
| about how these platforms' algorithms ostensibly promote hatred
| and shocking material?
|
| Just look at the Rohingya massacre [0] and tell me you're OK
| with it.
|
| [0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-
| faceb...
| naturalpb wrote:
| Opting for community notes rather than provably biased fact-
| checkers is akin to massacre, got it.
| bayindirh wrote:
| That's a shallow take. Opting for community notes without
| any fact checking will transform truth from facts to
| "loudest voice". So, who can yell louder will be accepted
| as the flag of truth, which is very dangerous.
|
| Of course, if you like your propaganda well-done, Facebook
| will be a great place for that.
| naturalpb wrote:
| You're right, it's a shallow take in response to a straw
| man of my position. Clearly content moderation is a HARD
| problem and the decision-makers at Facebook know this
| better than almost anyone. They made a decision that
| presumably was in their best interest, of which I happen
| to support.
| louthy wrote:
| > They made a decision that presumably was in their best
| interest
|
| They're making a decision based on political pressure.
| nailer wrote:
| How do you know? Occam's razor suggest that the fact
| checkers did indeed veer too far left of the American
| public.
| bayindirh wrote:
| From here, Occam's razor suggest that big companies want
| to be cozy with the new president, so they can continue
| getting what they want.
|
| Money doesn't care about wings.
| petargyurov wrote:
| Not sure what anyone here gains from a reductive comment
| like this. In case it wasn't clear, obviously that's not
| what I'm saying -- I was curious why you'd be OK with a
| reduction in fact checking when the platform is a means to
| such despicable acts.
| jsheard wrote:
| Part of the pushback is because they _are_ still dictating what
| you can say _except_ for some very particular exceptions which
| give away their true intentions. You 're still not allowed to
| call someone mentally ill as an insult, unless you're doing it
| homophobically or transphobically, in which case it's now
| explicitly allowed.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lf72fz3fas22
|
| If they'd removed that rule altogether then it could be
| handwaved as merely "free speech absolutism", for better or
| worse, but officially stating that certain minorities are
| acceptable targets of abuse that's otherwise forbidden is
| something else entirely.
| pesus wrote:
| Yup. The line about the "non serious usage of 'weird'" is
| another blatant sign of their true intentions. There's no
| reason to specify that unless you're upset over it because it
| was used against conservatives.
| nailer wrote:
| There is a large percentage of Americans that consider
| homosexuality abnormal, and that is, statistically, a fairly
| reasonable argument to make. Likewise most Americans do not
| subscribe to gender ideology, as the mist recent election
| (where this was part of the winning party's platform) shows.
| p1necone wrote:
| "freedom of speech, but only if it's statistically common"
| is a very strange take.
| nailer wrote:
| It is indeed. Who has that take, and why are you replying
| to my comment which makes no such claim?
| pavlov wrote:
| I'm still shaken by this, two days later.
|
| It's not a mistake or some kind of ambiguous rule that could
| be misread. Following is the direct quote from Meta's new
| guidelines. You can't insult people based on:
|
| _Mental characteristics, including but not limited to
| allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental
| illness, and unsupported comparisons between PC groups on the
| basis of inherent intellectual capacity. We do allow
| allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on
| gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious
| discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common
| non-serious usage of words like "weird."_
|
| They're carving out specific minorities to exclude them from
| protections afforded to everybody else.
|
| It's exactly like saying: "You can't doxx anyone on our
| platform, except Jews because that's political and religious
| discourse about where heathens live."
|
| So here we are in 2025, and this barely gets a mention in the
| press because they're so overwhelmed by the president-elect
| pretending to invade Denmark and whatever.
| pesus wrote:
| The resurgence in homophobia (amongst other things) is very
| concerning. Hell, you have people in this very thread that
| are making homophobic comments openly, attached to their
| real name and business portfolio. It seems they've stopped
| even pretending to not be hateful. I can only hope this is
| a temporary phenomenon.
| bobjordan wrote:
| Lets give them time to cook. It's likely the team refactoring
| these rules are mostly the same team that was leading the
| previous censorship. It's going to take some time to open
| back up.
| redeux wrote:
| I deleted my FB account a long long time ago and then a few years
| later I wanted to make a new one for business reasons and they
| blocked me from doing so.
|
| I'm not saying don't delete your account - I still don't have
| one, but be aware that it may not be as simple as just creating a
| new one if you change your mind in the future.
| james_pm wrote:
| Same. I have Instagram and Threads accounts, but I tried to get
| Facebook back about 5 years after deleting it and immediately
| got asked for ID and then was banned with no appeal possible. I
| guess they take deleting your account very personally.
| redeux wrote:
| > got asked for ID and then was banned with no appeal
| possible
|
| This is exactly what happened to me as well.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Aren't most services demanding multifactor id these days?
| Ostensibly to defend against fraud, but nicely dovetails into
| their surveillance databases.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| You couldn't use a secondary or business email account to sign
| up?
| redeux wrote:
| Probably, but I already didn't like FB. I was just doing it
| as a checkbox to say we were on FB too. Once they were
| actively hostile to me it was no longer worth it. As a matter
| of course, I try not to interact with hostile people or
| companies if I can help it.
| rozap wrote:
| I applaud the tutorial, but even so it's easier said than done. I
| deleted mine maybe 10 years ago, before they offered a hard
| delete option, so all you had to do to un-delete it was log in.
| Then, Comcast email (yes I used a Comcast email when i created my
| FB account in like 2008, whatever) got owned and so too did my
| facebook account. I started getting texts from friends the other
| week saying my account was alive and posting crypto scams. No way
| to recover it, since the email was gone. All the account recovery
| options (even though they have my current email) led to the same
| void, so now I'm permanently locked out. Facebook is scum of the
| earth.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I find it very easy to stay off their feed of algorithmic
| garbage, but unfortunately despite being (imo) less usable than
| Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace is what everyone around me uses.
| jilles wrote:
| This is the only thing keeping me from deleting my Facebook
| account. I recently moved and wanted to sell some things.
| Listed about 8 things on Craigslist and got some shady replies.
|
| I listed the same 8 things on Facebook Marketplace and sold
| everything within days...
| srameshc wrote:
| My instant thought was this was an article from the past and why
| is it reposted now !! Almost after a decade we are back to this
| headline again. Probably we will read something like this after
| another 10 years.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| While I'm all on board with deleting Facebook accounts - and
| deleting Facebook itself - the timing of this push is odd. Now
| that Facebook claims to open up the platform for a wider view
| than just the desired narrative is the time to get rid of your
| account? Please explain to me how it was better to be held on a
| short leash than to be allowed to run out that leash a little
| bit.
|
| I never had a Facebook account and as such I can not delete it
| but had I had one the time to delete it would have been when they
| started censoring anything which went against the desired
| narrative - probably around the time of the SARS2 unpleasantness
| - and not now that they claim to have been too censorious and
| 'promise' to allow more free speech. The same thing happened when
| Musk turned Twitter into X which makes me wonder why some people
| are so eager to embrace the censor and shun those places where he
| was kicked to the curb (even if I don't trust anything Zuckerberg
| says on this subject, he has shown his true colours a long time
| ago and they are dark and unpleasant to look at).
| ruthmarx wrote:
| Excluding hate, bigotry and wilful ignorance isn't being "held
| on a short leash", it's just excluding hateful people from
| spreading hate.
| chikenf00t wrote:
| I deleted my Facebook account back in 2015. I was in high school
| and going through a deep depression/mental break down. I remember
| feeling so much relief as the days went on. I don't think I was
| ever designed to handle social media properly. I doubt I'm the
| only one either.
| gazchop wrote:
| Deleted mine after they refused to let me make a comment on an
| unrelated group that Gatwick Airport is horrible on a Monday
| morning. Figured the algorithmic moderation was terrible and
| likely to waste my time conforming to some narrow and undefined
| form of speech. Not allowed to make a rational criticism.
|
| Then two days later, rather than fix that, they announce the
| change to moderation methodology which has benefits to the
| highest bidder rather than the community.
|
| Smells like another cesspit like X in the making.
|
| Gone! Both are bad. The problem is the platform existing at this
| point.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| Before Facebook introduced the option to unsend or delete sent
| messages, you could only remove them from your view.
|
| Does anyone know if there is an option to restore them, so you
| can then remove them from the people you've sent them to?
|
| Before I delete my account, I'd like to make sure I delete as
| many messages I sent to people also.
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(page generated 2025-01-09 23:01 UTC)