I’m finally leaving FaceBook. My account is queued for deletion on March 3. Why they can’t just delete it immediately, I have no idea.
A recent change to FaceBook’s TOS (Terms of Service) was the final straw. I’m not going to rehash it all here. It has been documented in numerous other places. I think The Consumerist was the first to pick up on it, and then, once Mashable got hold of it, everyone was talking about it. For the benefit of the three people left in the world who haven’t heard the story, basically the new TOS means that FaceBook owns your content, and that it can do whatsoever it pleases with it — it can (as the owner) even sell your content to third parties.
After the furore from users, FaceBook rescinded, reintroducing the former TOS, with many users applauding them for doing so. It’s akin to punching someone in the face, but then helping them up, and handing them a tissue to clean their bloodied nose. Oh, he’s so kind! So, it looks as though the acclaimed teenage magician Mark Zuckerberg, has pulled yet another rabbit out of the hat (muted applause).
Compare FaceBook’s TOS with that of Twitter’s,
We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.
What really irks me is that FaceBook thought they could get away with it; and for me, it’s about trust. I no longer trust FaceBook. If you can live with it, then good for you; but for me it’s adieu and good riddance.
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Note: if you wish to delete, rather than simply suspend your FB account, then here is your solution.
4 Comments
:-) Well the first clue I got about the wrong doings of FB where the way the wanted everything to go through their site — emails for instance. It was like a internet in a internet, which I did find weird, but it dawned on me later on.
Im proud of you for the bold steps :-)
also if you’re banned from Flickr (for unjust or just causes it doesn’t matter) all your content simply vanishes … now FB claims that the deletion time and the TOS is changed because they have to be legally “authorized” to keep that content available in their systems (and your contact’s pages) even if you leave …
mah …
I de-activated my Facebook many moons ago and was upset that there seemed to be no option to permanently delete my information. I was relieved when this was made available and I’ve been permanently deactivated, finally.
I was one of the users who blew mad fire up facebook’s ass. I couldn’t understand what they were thinking. I have taken into consideration to deleting my account, but we’ll see. I have been drawn to VIRB (www.virb.com) for awhile now. Their new platform that was released the other day is really beautiful. They’re still working out the kinks but its worth a look at.