Facebook fights back, disallows the Suicide Machine

Like the computer in the movie "2001," Facebook is struggling to keep its profiles from virtual extinction at the hands of its arch enemy - the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine.

The Suicide Machine is a clever Web site out of the Netherlands that was designed to free users from their social network lives on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. You just pick one of the networks, start up the machine, and it graphically shows you unfriending your contacts, one by one, and eliminating all your other contacts with your profile. Forever.

Although the now-friendless profile actually survives, the Suicide Machine is designed not to allow you ever to sign on to it again.

You don't want to fool around with it unless you're serious. Like taking that first step off the Golden Gate Bridge, once you click to start the process on the Suicide Machine, you can't stop it.

See video, below, on how the machine works and a tongue-in-cheek look at life in the real world after freedom from social-networking sites.

Except that Facebook is now fighting back. The Suicide Machine is reporting that Facebook has banned its IP address, thus foiling suicides. You can almost hear the machine singing "Daisy."

But this is not the end, swears the Web version of Dr. Kevorkian. The Suicide Machine posted a friendly message on its site: "We are currently looking in ways to circumvent this ungrounded restriction imposed on our service!  Thanks for your understanding."

-- David Colker

web 2.0 suicide machine promotion from moddr_ on Vimeo.