Feel like leaving Facebook? Good luck. It takes all of 30 seconds to become part of what would be the third largest country in the world if it declared independance. Leaving is a much more complex task.
As an experiment, a friend and I decided to leave Facebook for a week. So I went through the deactivation process, which is actually somewhat difficult. First of all, you have to search a little bit for the deactivate button - for some reason, its under the account security settings. Before you can see the deactivation instructions, you have to look at pictures of you and your friends, all captioned "so-and-so will miss you. Then you have to explain why you're leaving Facebook. The site doesn't let you move on until you've written something in the explanation box. A request for reentering your password and a ReCaptcha finish off the proceedings.
Even then you're not really gone from facebook, as the word "deactivate" implies. Re-activating Facebook just means typing in your email and password into the site, and your account is back to normal.
This is not a good setting to stay off of Facebook for a week. My friend once by sheer force of habit logged into facebook before remembering the experiment. Then he had to go through the deactivation process all over again. I had a similar experience when my phone automatically logged me in.
Looks like Facebook does not want you to ever leave.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Really interesting... and a bit scary. Pretty hard to get yourself off the internet once it's out there.
Gosh that's pretty creepy. I think it's Facebook's goal to become a major part of peoples' lives for the rest of their lives. Hence the weird timelines laying out your life for the world to see.
This makes me rethink my desicion to join facebook. Being almost permanently attached to the internet once you have joined freaks me out. It also makes me wonder where all your posted information goes even after you have supposedly deleted it.
Post a Comment