[city41]

I deactivated my account over a year ago. Facebook will not delete your account, deactivate is the best you can do. Interestingly I went to a Facebook event at their headquarters and when I signed in, there was my profile picture staring back at me. I thought pulling it out of my deactivated account was in poor taste.

Anyway, I can say I'm happier without it. I'm now seriously considering deactivating my Twitter account. Twitter really will delete your account after I believe 30 days of it being deactivated.

[rolodato]

It is possible to permanently delete a Facebook account. It's not known whether this truly deletes it, but it's a more permanent measure than deactivation: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=relate...

This is a nefarious dark pattern though - I don't think there's any way to find the delete option through menus, you have to search through Google or Facebook's help center.

[city41]

Ah, I did not know that. As far as I know the UI only offers deactivate as an option.

Thanks, I just deleted my account.

[rak00n]

I thought Facebook does delete your account. Do you have a source?

[westmeal]

Facebook can remove it from public view however any posts you make are the property of Facebook and so they continue to hold onto it.

[zeroer]

My guess is that they don't delete anything due to regulatory and legal reasons.

[brokenmachine]

What possible regulatory and legal reasons would there be that they can't delete your account?

It's not like it's financial information.

Any other service (eg Google) expressly says in it's TOS that they may delete your account whenever they feel like it.

[DashRattlesnake]

My guess is they don't delete it because your data is valuable to them and they don't want to lose it, though they may use fake regulatory and legal excuses.