Getting rid of that gosh darned Facebook!

[Christiern]

Nothing personal, but I am convinced that Facebook could not exist without dummies.

[neveronfriday]

Chris, I'm the last person to defend Facebook's way of doing things, but you do come across as someone whining about something that

a) he doesn't know how to use and

b) he doesn't have any use for.

I find that to be rather odd.

[Christiern]

Chris, I'm the last person to defend Facebook's way of doing things, but you do come across as someone whining about something that

a) he doesn't know how to use and

b) he doesn't have any use for.

I find that to be rather odd.

No whining here, just outrage.

a) I am no stranger to online navigation and I have owned a computer for over 30 years. When I first discovered how FB takes control, I began my search for an exit (a permanent one). I did not stop until I received a message that I was now no longer a subscriber to FB. Did it stop the intrusion? You bet it didn't. And when I brought the site up (without logging in) it had my name and welcomed me "back". Fucking bastards! They know what they are doing, that's why they don't let you have direct contact. I sent an e-mail to Facebook.com and received a generic automated response. I got rid of the e-mail address I used when I so foolishly signed up and it did not prevent them from invading my privacy, they found another address for me and urged me to re-register using it. The more I attempt to shake these bastards, the more I discover that I am jus one victim in a rather large crowd of "whiners". You should know, btw that there is a difference between whining and making a legitimate complaint.

b) You are right, I have no earthly use for the damn site, which is why I very quickly tried to get out from under it. You may not know that the FB bastards have written their program so that it is a breeze to get in but very difficult—if not impossible—to get out. I find no defense for that sort of thing. I appreciate and tried Bill Barton's step by step exit strategy, but it does not work for me. So, regardless of how I "come across," the fact is that this site is a trap that needs to be investigated.

[Big Wheel]

Fucking bastards! They know what they are doing, that's why they don't let you have direct contact.

By "direct contact" you mean the ability to easily contact their support team? They have 400 million active users. Imagine if, when you worked at WBAI, that every inhabitant of North America listened to you every day. Now imagine that, say, 0.1% of those listeners had some beef that they needed to work out - they wanted to make a request or had trouble with their signal or whatever. That still comes out to 400,000 requests every day. That's the kind of scale we're talking about here - even if they hired 1000 people to field such requests they'd still have to tackle them at a rate of almost one every minute just to answer them all.

[AndrewHill]

I really don't "get" all of these references to "spam" people are throwing around. I have a very active Facebook account and have no problems whatsoever along those lines.

Me neither. Now myspace on the other hand....

[Christiern]

Fucking bastards! They know what they are doing, that's why they don't let you have direct contact.

By "direct contact" you mean the ability to easily contact their support team? They have 400 million active users. Imagine if, when you worked at WBAI, that every inhabitant of North America listened to you every day. Now imagine that, say, 0.1% of those listeners had some beef that they needed to work out - they wanted to make a request or had trouble with their signal or whatever. That still comes out to 400,000 requests every day. That's the kind of scale we're talking about here - even if they hired 1000 people to field such requests they'd still have to tackle them at a rate of almost one every minute just to answer them all.

You make a good point, BW. That said, other hugely popular sites somehow manage to respond to e-mail, Amazon, for example. And if the sheer number of subscribers makes direct contact prohibitive, they should give one less reason to attempt such contact—for example, a simple way out.

[Van Basten II]

Last thing I remember I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back to the place I was before

"Relax," said the night man, "We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like but you can never leave"

[Christiern]

A good one, VB II.

Roach Motel comes to my mind: "They check in, but they don't check out."

[AllenLowe]

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[Brad]

I keep receiving requests for them to link to other pages for things I said I liked, etc. Usually ignore them but today unchecked them all so the information isn't floating around or whatever.

[neveronfriday]

b) You are right, I have no earthly use for the damn site, which is why I very quickly tried to get out from under it. You may not know that the FB bastards have written their program so that it is a breeze to get in but very difficult—if not impossible—to get out. I find no defense for that sort of thing. I appreciate and tried Bill Barton's step by step exit strategy, but it does not work for me. So, regardless of how I "come across," the fact is that this site is a trap that needs to be investigated.

Hm.

I recently deleted a second account (completely separate via masked IP, masked mail address etc.) and it wasn't a problem.

Bill's step-by-step above is missing one essential part: You also absolutely need to get rid of any cookies FB set on your PC because if you return to the page, the cookies kick in and you are "recognized" again.

P.S.: Although they state so, I really don't believe that they delete your "deleted" account from their servers. That's my paranoia kicking in (plus a lot of reading up on the inner workings on their server cloud setup), I guess, but if you read their (ass-long) terms in detail, they don't have to. They actually have the nerve to state that everything you post on there "belongs" to them and they can do whatever they like with it. There's lots of pussyfooting (verbally) around that section in their terms, but it's all BS. So, I chose to delete everything but my name, which is all I need to navigate that monstrosity. In the long run, if you know how their server cloud works, my info will be gone (because unused for a [server-set] pre-determined period of time). If I then decide to delete my account in the future, it will only have my name left in the DB ... until that's gone as well after a while.

Edited May 13, 2010 by neveronfriday

[Big Wheel]

Fucking bastards! They know what they are doing, that's why they don't let you have direct contact.

By "direct contact" you mean the ability to easily contact their support team? They have 400 million active users. Imagine if, when you worked at WBAI, that every inhabitant of North America listened to you every day. Now imagine that, say, 0.1% of those listeners had some beef that they needed to work out - they wanted to make a request or had trouble with their signal or whatever. That still comes out to 400,000 requests every day. That's the kind of scale we're talking about here - even if they hired 1000 people to field such requests they'd still have to tackle them at a rate of almost one every minute just to answer them all.

You make a good point, BW. That said, other hugely popular sites somehow manage to respond to e-mail, Amazon, for example. And if the sheer number of subscribers makes direct contact prohibitive, they should give one less reason to attempt such contact—for example, a simple way out.

Amazon a) is taking your money, and thus has an enormous business incentive to be reachable; b) likely has fewer users than Facebook by at least a factor of two; c) has had a head start of a decade to learn how to do this.

That said, even Amazon's support is mostly crap - while I've found it responsive, all email support is handled by India and the quality of answer to non-routine questions is bad.

[Guest Bill Barton]

b) You are right, I have no earthly use for the damn site, which is why I very quickly tried to get out from under it. You may not know that the FB bastards have written their program so that it is a breeze to get in but very difficult—if not impossible—to get out. I find no defense for that sort of thing. I appreciate and tried Bill Barton's step by step exit strategy, but it does not work for me. So, regardless of how I "come across," the fact is that this site is a trap that needs to be investigated.

Hm.

I recently deleted a second account (completely separate via masked IP, masked mail address etc.) and it wasn't a problem.

Bill's step-by-step above is missing one essential part: You also absolutely need to get rid of any cookies FB set on your PC because if you return to the page, the cookies kick in and you are "recognized" again.

P.S.: Although they state so, I really don't believe that they delete your "deleted" account from their servers. That's my paranoia kicking in (plus a lot of reading up on the inner workings on their server cloud setup), I guess, but if you read their (ass-long) terms in detail, they don't have to. They actually have the nerve to state that everything you post on there "belongs" to them and they can do whatever they like with it. There's lots of pussyfooting (verbally) around that section in their terms, but it's all BS. So, I chose to delete everything but my name, which is all I need to navigate that monstrosity. In the long run, if you know how their server cloud works, my info will be gone (because unused for a [server-set] pre-determined period of time). If I then decide to delete my account in the future, it will only have my name left in the DB ... until that's gone as well after a while.

According to the information that I've found online, the account is put "on hold" as it were for two weeks, "deactivated" to use their terminology, and then is deleted. So it is very important that you do not attempt to log in again during that period of time. And, yes, all cookies should be cleaned out of your cache.

[Elissa]

wait - you mean those 25 year old girls named Candy and wearing tight tank tops don't love me for myself?

But we do!

XX

[7/4]

facebook hysteria.

[trane_fanatic]

Facebook fucking scares me. Can someone explains to me how it's been able to steal my contacts verbatim off two different e-mail accounts and send me recommendations of people I'd like to add based on them. I have never searched for these people on Facebook itself. One of these folks was a woman who I had an unpleasant experience with and had erased her contact too. Don't know how they got that. Perhaps they are giving these recommendations based on scanning other folks' e-mail accounts?

Edited May 14, 2010 by trane_fanatic

[Big Wheel]

Facebook fucking scares me. Can someone explains to me how it's been able to steal my contacts verbatim off two different e-mail accounts and send me recommendations of people I'd like to add based on them. I have never searched for these people on Facebook itself. One of these folks was a woman who I had an unpleasant experience with and had erased her contact too. Don't know how they got that. Perhaps they are giving these recommendations based on scanning other folks' e-mail accounts?

Did you ever allow facebook access to your email to search for people you already know on facebook? If not, what you're saying is possible - they could be noticing that your email address turns up in a bunch of other people's contact lists. Or it's possible that their algorithm is just noticing that you share lots of friends (or friends of friends). That's the connection I have with most of the friend suggestions - they worked at the same company as me and we usually share a number of acquaintances.

[Big Wheel]

Facebook fucking scares me. Can someone explains to me how it's been able to steal my contacts verbatim off two different e-mail accounts and send me recommendations of people I'd like to add based on them. I have never searched for these people on Facebook itself. One of these folks was a woman who I had an unpleasant experience with and had erased her contact too. Don't know how they got that. Perhaps they are giving these recommendations based on scanning other folks' e-mail accounts?

Did you ever allow facebook access to your email to search for people you already know on facebook? If not, what you're saying is possible - they could be noticing that your email address turns up in a bunch of other people's contact lists. Or it's possible that their algorithm is just noticing that you share lots of friends (or friends of friends). That's the connection I have with most of the friend suggestions - they worked at the same company as me and we usually share a number of acquaintances.

Funnily enough, I know a few Facebook engineers and this subject came up in conversation with one of them tonight. Your last guess was correct - for some (not all AFAIK) of the friend suggestions, they actually harvest the email addresses from other people's uploaded contact lists and match it (if possible) with the email address associated with your Facebook account. Slightly creepy, but there you have it.

Edited May 15, 2010 by Big Wheel

[Dan Gould]

I knew there was a reason why I never allowed the "find people you email" function.

I'll find people I want to find, thank you very much.

[Christiern]

Not slightly creepy, BW

[Big Wheel]

Not slightly creepy, BW

My take on a lot of these issues, I think, is that we're criticizing Facebook because they do unusual things with our data - but it's data that we gave them. Is Facebook invading your privacy by telling you that it knows that you probably know someone, because you showed up in their email contacts? Well, the person told Facebook that they knew you, and Facebook now has that data whether they display that fact to you or not. So if there's any creepiness here, it's more in the retention of that person's data than that the fact that they tell you that they have it.

Likewise, when I started checking out the photos of the attractive woman I met the other day, all her posts immediately shot up to the top of my "Top News" feed. Is that creepy? (Of Facebook, not me, I mean. I think my own creepiness is a given.) By the number of pageviews I've already told Facebook I'm interested in information about this person. So while obviously it would be awful if Facebook sent her a message saying "wow, this guy sure has looked at a lot of your photos lately", it doesn't strike me as so irresponsible to tailor my own news feed to posts that I'm probably going to be interested in.

[Christiern]

I think you are being naïve, BW.

[Chalupa]

http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/05/07/facebook-interested-in-palestine-not-anymore/

[Jazzmoose]

My take on a lot of these issues, I think, is that we're criticizing Facebook because they do unusual things with our data - but it's data that we gave them.

I think we're all still in the stage of adapting to this new internet thing, and have expectations of privacy that are no longer applicable, unless we just stay off the net. I'm not sure Facebook is really doing "unusual things", it's just that, in the case of Facebook, we've noticed.

[Christiern]

I certainly hope that what Facebook is doing can rightly be termed "unusual."

If we all just shrugged, as some here do, I hate to think what the FB'ers might do.