[justsaysmthng]

> is to close your account, block social media bugs and encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Much easier said than done.

First, there is no way to 'close' your account - you can only 'deactivate' it.

I did it in July, but then I noticed that a lot of social activities - like concerts, festivals, parties, etc, are organised using Facebook so if you're not on it, you can't participate.

This is very frustrating and wrong, but that's what the world does.

I personally think that Facebook is breaking the Internet and we're just starting to see the first signs of the bad things to come out of it.

Back to account 'deactivation' - if you log in to your deactivated account, Facebook conveniently 'reactivates' your account automatically, so you can't just log in to look at your data, which of course is not yours and is the currency which Facebook exchanges for real cash.

Telling friends and family to do the same is useless - most don't care even for 1 second about 'privacy' or things like that.

So 'closing' your account is more than just stopping to use a web application. It's a lifestyle choice - do you want to stay secluded, excluded from a lot of social activities and considered an 'introverted loner' or do you go with the flow and get trapped more and more into this social experiment ...

[thechowchowman]

Your first statement is incorrect, you can delete your account, it takes 14 days to do.

https://m.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=hc_fnav&...

[JadeNB]

> I did it in July, but then I noticed that a lot of social activities - like concerts, festivals, parties, etc, are organised using Facebook so if you're not on it, you can't participate.

They are organised this way because it is an effective way to organise them; so the only sure way to stop them being organised this way is to make it ineffective (by not participating, by urging others not to do so, and, crucially, by making your reasons known to the organisers). It is true that not using Facebook is an inconvenience, but there is no guarantee of a right to protest without inconvenience!

[2close4comfort]

You can delete it there are what only 5 datacenters...finding your data and cleansing it should not be too hard just alittle repetative ;) But the more effective way to make Facebook listen is to hit them in the pocketbook. Keep your account use an ad-blocker if enough people did that long enough...

[galdosdi]

They'll still profit from additional ad revenue when other people, like your friends and family, view your posts and use facebook longer than they would have because they are interested in you and your life.

[newscracker]

> You can delete it there are what only 5 datacenters...finding your data and cleansing it should not be too hard just alittle repetative ;)

I don't know if your comment was tongue-in-cheek, so here goes. Actually, it's not about the number of data centers Facebook has, but the number of CDNs and edge caches around the world and how FB manages those, including third party companies (like Akamai) that provide this service for Facebook. Plus, Facebook has had a lot of trouble, in a very shameful and absolutely incompetent kind of way, in removing the visibility of photos that were "deleted" by users. See this saga spanning from 2009 through 2012 as reported by Ars. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

> But the more effective way to make Facebook listen is to hit them in the pocketbook. Keep your account use an ad-blocker if enough people did that long enough…

Facebook is already trying to push more users to use its mobile and desktop apps so it can have more control over the content (read as "ads") shown and collect more information that's not easily wipeable by end users (like cookies, cache, etc.). We will see a time in the coming years when there won't be a browser interface for the platform, and the cat and mouse game between ads that look like content and ad blockers (to block FB ads that look like content) will continue on. Depending on the platform, people may start needing content blockers on their routers (or an internal proxy server) to deal with this.

[1]: http://arstechnica.com/business/2009/07/are-those-photos-rea... (July 2009)

[2]: http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/10/facebook-may-be-maki... (October 2010)

[3]: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/nearly-3-years-later... (February 2012)