Tuesday 29 April 2008

Facebook update

Yesterday I rather naïvely spoke of removing myself from Facebook. I assumed it would be a three or four step process but, of course, it’s not. There is no obvious means of deleting a Facebook account – you can only ‘deactivate’ it. This hides your profile from view but retains all of the personal information. Facebook claims that they are helping us by only including this option, because if we change our minds then we can reactivate the account and it will appear exactly as it did before. Well, how kind of them. See how they know our minds better than we do? See how they can second guess our decision making? Presumably, at least, there’s a long winded process to restore a deactivated account? For security reasons? Nnnnnnno. You just log in as before and it reappears. Brilliant. Even without reactivating, your friends can still invite you to things and tag you in photos. It’s like you never left!

Facebook, you are crooks. If I want to remove my account, I want it removed completely and I shouldn’t have to fight you to do it. I did a quick search for more permanent methods of deletion and came across this amusing article which should nonetheless scare you.

I was expecting to feel a sense of elation at being free, but I don’t feel free at all. It’s like splitting up with a partner but still living with them. As much as I disliked MySpace, at least they had the decency to let me make a clean break.

Meanwhile, on a brighter note, I have embarked upon a campaign of promotion for the comic. If you see the battle bus on its travels, do give it a wave.

4 comments:

Ariane said...

Ohhh... I wish you were still on there. All my other friends are on there (well, bar two) and it makes me sad that you're not. Ah well.

anonemouse said...

graham, love the degraded shiny spot atop Luntell's head in today's comic.
not to mention the OCDesque placement of sundry items atop his tidy desk.
you can really see where that week off work went, you lucky, lucky man.
apologies btw for posting here, but didn't know where else i was supposed to say this..

Graham said...

ER, don't apologise. If I were a clever man I would create some kind of comments facility on the site itself, but a clever man I am not. Are there any boffins out there who could advise on this?

Ariane said...

Yeah - me!

No, hang on...