Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/23/a-tour-of-the-manipulative-cr.html
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I deleted my account some years back, and it was a net positive change.
I am considering again, but now have to balance the recent development of becoming “Facebook official” with my SO.
Christ. Looks like I can’t then. Because becoming “G+ Official” carries no weight.
Also get off my lawn I guess!
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I never had a Facecrack account, but I kinda want to make one now, just so that my bajillion addict friends can get all excited and do whatever it is they do instead of emailing me their likes, and then just deleting the hell out of that account.
But that’s too much heat, not enough light. <—Which is a metric I fail at too often anyway, so I won’t. 
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The 14 day waiting period was interesting, because some browser automatically logged me in. I had to go back in and re-delete. Second time, I changed my password to something totally random, and only kept it n notepad until I had finished deleting the account. No way to log back in accidentally or out of habit.
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Hmm, the author seemed to have appreciated the “are you sure, we can help” dialog and the fortnight-in-case-you-change-your-mind feature, but I’m a big fan of delete means delete. Like, NO means NO!
Is it possible that the any kind of delete action can be activated by accident? Yes it is-- that’s why one must treat it with respect; the keyboard’s not a toy!
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Tell that to all the cats.
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A fortnight?! Damn, it was only 4-5 days a couple years ago.
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They really really wanna keep the junkies hooked.
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If I delete my personal account, will it also delete my equally useless business account? Social media marketing consultants will tell you a Facebook presence is critical to marketing success. They also will tell you that it’s not the kind of success you can measure in dollars.
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Elon Musk doesn’t agree. 
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My wife put in the request but it was never honored. She’s just left it static.
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Oh, and another thing. After you’ve started the doom clock on your account, wipe all the Facebook cookies from your browser.
Otherwise they’ll know it’s you whenever you touch the site in any way, like little Facebook icons on other sites that are fetched from Facebook.
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I wonder about the utility of deleting facebook accounts. They aren’t going to delete the data they have on you; it’s their data, not yours, even if they want you to think otherwise. I simply stopped using facebook except in extenuating circumstances. (Such as the recent loss of two friends. Since I still had my account, I was able to log in to find out about their memorials.)
Afterwards, I log out and delete cookies. The point is to block facebook from continuing to gather and sell information about me. I don’t have to delete my account to do that.
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You should be wiping cookies routinely anyways.
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I’ve never had a Facebook account, but from their unsolicited emails begging me to join, they’ve already composed a complete social graph of me (including knowing that a reference to my name from someone I’ve not spoken with in 40 years (i.e. pre-email) must have referred to me).
While they can’t monetize me by showing me ads, I’m assuming they can still monetize their knowledge of most of my personal information and half my browsing (NoScript was illuminating - About half the pages I visit notify FB, Google by about 3/4) by selling it to all and sundry.
If you delete you account, is that derived information deleted too? Or just the information that they got from your posts?
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It’s probably my fault for being fairly computer-illiterate, but it annoyed me that deleting my facebook account had the unintended effect of erasing the log-in to a game I used to play, one I did not realize had ties to facebook. It was a silly little game, and I’m not willing to play hundreds of hours over again to get it back, but I miss it.
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Still easier than cancelling AOL.
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