Getting off Facebook: 1984 or just 2008?

An interesting NYT article by Maria Aspan shows how hard it is to delete your Facebook account. 

Does anyone disagree that with anything relating to online privacy, you should never have to click more than two buttons?  (1) A button that does exactly what you want it to do (e.g. delete account) immediately after you click, and (2) a second button confirming you meant to do the first thing.

But with Facebook and other beehives of demographic honey, it's not that easy. No delete button in sight. No delete request form. Just a "deactivate" option. To get your account vaporized, you've got to actually write to Facebook. And who has time to write anymore?

 

It's as though they're doing you a favor by letting go of your information.  Forget that you did them a favor by giving them free, monetizable information in the first place. Sally, you said we could have your birthday! You said so! Teacher, Sally said we could have her birthday and now she wants it back!

The NYT article quotes Steve Mansour, who had a heck of a time getting his Facebook account deleted.  In a long, fruitless series of complaints to TRUSTe (the privacy watchdog that vouches for Facebook's information practices), Mansour makes a cogent case that when you're away, TRUSTe may not exactly be watching your dog.

Just to be the devil's advocate for a moment, though, let's remember who put all that information on the Internet in the first place ...

Post your deletion and/or privacy stories in the comments. And be assured that the L.A. Times will not sell your personal anecdotes to any third party ...

Comments

[Steven Mansour]

"Just to be the devil's advocate for a moment, though, let's remember who put all that information on the Internet in the first place ..."

That's a fair statement, but there is a rather thick line between "putting info on the internet" by writing articles on, say, your own blog, vs. filling out a nice form on Facebook that basically spells out your entire identity for them... and then some.

Facebook collects structured, specific information that makes it ridiculously easy for them / their partners / application developers / a good hacker to build a complete psychological (or other) profile on you.

- “Liberal Activists of Middle Eastern Descent in the Montreal area? Round ‘em up!”
- “Sir, this profile presents signs in line with possible future criminal activity. We should keep an eye on them.”
- Etc.

Yes, I share lots on my blog that could constitute private information, but it’s not presented or structured in such a way that an organization could cull in any useful manner. Facebook is the great data miner in the sky.

Secondly, it’s also about the relationships we present inside Facebook. If I’m involved in activities that could be considered sketchy (I’m not), and my friend is about to get hired for a new job, I don’t want their employer finding their profile and seeing their link to me. Private voluntary disclosure is one thing; association / congregation privacy is a whole other ballpark.