Yesterday, I did successfully kill my own Facebook account, and it is gone for good. If you were one of my Facebook friends, it was nothing personal — you’ve still got my email, yeah? Or can follow me on Twitter? Or hey, there’s this blog which you’ve obviously found. I’ve just found Facebook increasingly repugnant, and as they do more and more crap to harvest information and money, it’s utility to me has been outweighed by its ugliness and inconvenience.
If you also want to free yourself from the Facebook shackles, you can just follow these instructions like I did. I think they worked. They’re provided by Facebook itself, which leaves me suspicious that they lied and didn’t really delete all my information, and that they may have left a few hooks in place to reel me in when they want.
You still show up as a FB friend, but your picture is gone and when I click on your account I get this:
“If Pz Myers reactivates their account, you’ll still be friends. If you unfriend them and they reactivate their account, you’ll have to send them a friend request to see their Facebook posts.”
So I’d say your account is still there. it’s just deactivated. I’d bet your info is still there.
Facebook’s pernicious algorithms continue to offer me noisome recommendations, which I keep banning forever (there are so many of them!), but FB also continues to be the one convenient arm’s-length connection I have to my Covid-promoting family members. (I’m not on Instagram [which is just another aspect of FB anyway] or Twitter.) The first fatality occurred this month, but no one appears to have learned any lessons from it. In their opinion, vaccines are still poison and animal meds are the way to go. Or the whole thing is a hoax (people are just pretending to die?). Distressingly stupid. But far away from me. [sigh]
FB attempts to keep profiles of everybody who ever interact with them in any way (including just visiting a site which has any FB gubbins on it, which is almost all of them these days), regardless of whether they’ve ever had an account or not, so they’ll certainly be hanging on to anything they’ve already collected from you. They may not bother keeping the all stuff you cared about (photos, posts, etc), but they’ll be keeping the stuff they care about (social network graph, advertising profile, and so on).
I tried to delete my account years ago, and in the end had to settle for deactivating it.
Sadly, there used to be a way to actually fully delete your account, but FB noticed that instructions were available on the internet, so they deleted the final page in the steps – you click on the “yes, delete my account” verification, and it sends you to a 404: page not found” error. The only straight up 404 page on facebook. No “did you mean”, or “alternate suggestions”, just 404: page not found in stark black letters on a plain white background.
Facebook forced troll farm content on over 40% of all Americans each month
So I deleted all the cookies in my cookie jar and hit refresh on this page. It sent me 17 files, 2 of them were clearly marked as FaceBook cache files plus a third suspect. And that’s with cookies blocked
FB is like an invasive species choking the Internet that
Just
Won’t
Die!
I just had a nightmare last night that I bought a new tablet that auto-started a facebook app that insta-resurrected my account. I wanted to delete but kept getting interrupted. Ugh.
Easy way to unsubscribe from Facebook:
This was posted by the frustrated moderator of a Yahoo Groups list after a subscriber had taken up several days of list space asking for directions on how to unsubscribe which s/he was apparently unable to comprehend….
“If this is truly a plea to be unsubscribed you should know that there’s a very simple, if not inexpensive, way to do so.”
“To unsubscribe from this list you must first purchase a Craft-O-Matic Adjustable Subscription Cancellation Unit. The unit can be obtained from most hardware stores and dental clinics. Be sure to obtain the proper permits to operate the unit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Food and Drug Administration in Washington D.C. USA. This is a single use item and if there is more than one list that you wish to leave you will need to purchase additional units.”
“Carefully unpack the kit and place each component in its accompanying mesh safety bag. Mount the Pershing DF4 mesinator on top of the perforated Gerring Mach 77 refibulator and attach them using the eight-millimeter torque fork. Make sure that the refibulator is mounted at a 66 degree angle and properly dispersed so that it is flush with the curved section of the Pyrex thistle tube.”
“Place the four sections of the triangular separation gear into the posture cylinder and lock them into place using the Duck Tape adhesive strip. Insert the wiggling pin into the wobbling hole, making sure that it seated correctly. The square pin is used here. We’ll discuss the round one later.”
“Place the D cell battery and the eleven 9 volt batteries in the power chamber.”
“To insure correct operation, the device should be calibrated before using the optional digital corkscrew optional extra accessory pack, not included, prior to operation. Insert the digital corkscrew through the electronic combustion service chamber using caution not to touch the reinforced tungsten igniter control module and quickly turn the inverter drive to 28.6 degrees. Turn the Craft-O-Matic Adjustable Subscription cancellation Unit upside down and hit the bottom plate with a 48-ounce ball-peen hammer while shaking the unit vigorously. Force the door open to the incineration valve compartment and set the pressure gauge to 719 psi.”
“Close the door and seal it shut with more duct tape.”
“The unit should now be properly calibrated and ready to use.”
“Before activating the Craft-O-Matic Adjustable Subscription Cancellation Unit, you must first elevate it to a height of 229 feet above sea level to insure that the unit receives the proper lowered oxygen level and a lower barometric pressure. The differential pressure insures a direct downdraft to your own email server without crossover detrimous and obfuscation of your next door neighbors own system. The user can avoid a trip out of the home to do this with the additional purchase of a pressure changer like that used in eliminating “the bends” in SCUBA divers. For those living above this altitude an 18.5 hp. shop-vac attached to a lexan, air tight box will suffice to lower the perceived altitude.”
“Point the aerial to 17 degrees north by northeast to within the parameters of the Telstar GS-2 weather satellite and apply pressure to the wing shaft on the southern most section of the modular accelerator. Using the special ratchet adapter supplied with the unit, rotate the heater core to the “on” position. NOTE, a “regular ratchet” won’t work here. If you lose the special ratchet we won’t replace it. You’ll need to purchase a new Subscription Cancellation Unit.”
“The “on” position has been obtained when the green light begins to flash, signifying that the red light is about to go off. Once the red light is off, flip the toggle switch labeled “ON/OFF” to the “ON” position and count to 47 before logging on to the system.”
“Logon using your username and password and wait for the prompt. Once prompted you must check the box with the appropriate action you wish to take and then press the pressure release button and turn off the compressor while turning the hand crank at 231 meters per minute; plus or minus 5. Next, press control, alt, delete, caps lock, shift, number lock, escape and tab simultaneously, then press enter.”
“You will have one-second to complete the procedure. If you fail to respond within the time limit allowed, simply purchase a new Craft-O- Matic Adjustable Subscription Cancellation Unit and start over from the beginning.”
“Please remember that this is the only way for you to unsubscribe from this list. We have made every attempt to simplify the procedure for your convenience.”
“Failure to comply with the unsubscribe policy will result in immediate termination of your subscription, so please follow the above directions closely.”
“Or you can simply leave the group by going to the home page and use the Leave Group link.”
@stroppy
Try Ghostery to block cookies, works like a charm for me. I use the free version and haven’t had any troubles.
@8 cristoph: I was going to award you bonus points for using the correct “Duck tape” but then you switched to the incorrect “duct tape” within the same comment.
This series of videos may be helpful:
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
@ Reginald Selkirk, #10: No worries-I stole it from an old Yahoo group and pasted it here.
I don’t understand the reason for all the com-lints here about FB. My experience is very different. I just looked at everything for the past few days and there were about 15 posts from friends and maybe 8-10 from advertisers, most of which are places I have visited. The New Yorker, The Times, Clothing Arts(very nice pants), a couple more clothing sites, Salvation Army (I don’t visit them),and a few other innocuous sites-nothing that annoys me. I wonder why so many of you are seeing such objectionable things and I am not. Something to do with where you visit online?