I did after yesterday’s story. It’s only a matter of time before you don’t even have to interact with their AI tools to kick off them showing you yourself in generated content. No thanks! They make it damn obscure to find too. I had to click a direct link to the option from their help pages.
I deleted my Facebook account back in 2015. I was in high school and going through a deep depression/mental break down. I remember feeling so much relief as the days went on. I don't think I was ever designed to handle social media properly. I doubt I'm the only one either.
I started college around 2005, when Facebook was still “exclusive to .edu college email addresses” and it was novel at the time, mostly because it was unfortunately exclusive.
My 3rd year I trimmed my friends list down from 10k to 1k, people I actually at least remembered having a conversation with. The next I took it down to about 300 people, and realized “I see or communicate with these people outside of this website already” and killed my account.
Best decision I ever made relative to the topic of social media.
no one is designed to handle social media at scale. Our brains are calibrated to express empathy at different levels for finite numbers of people who are of a given proximity to us (emotionally and physically) — e.g. the smaller and closer the group, the more capable of empathy (and thus worthy of exposure to nuanced feelings and more frequent exposure) we are.
Being bombarded with the thoughts and takes (especially when distorted in content and exposure frequency by an ad platform disguised as a social media site) of thousands of people — only a few of whom you can possibly know closely — is a recipe for mass psychosis.
I deleted my FB account a long long time ago and then a few years later I wanted to make a new one for business reasons and they blocked me from doing so.
I’m not saying don’t delete your account - I still don’t have one, but be aware that it may not be as simple as just creating a new one if you change your mind in the future.
Same. I have Instagram and Threads accounts, but I tried to get Facebook back about 5 years after deleting it and immediately got asked for ID and then was banned with no appeal possible. I guess they take deleting your account very personally.
similar thing happened to me, my recently opened Instagram account was suspended saying that it was being used for spam (even though there were no posts or comments, only liking and saving other people's posts), and allowed me to get it back only after adding a phone number.
But if the deactivated account was still there for you to try and access and for fb to reactivate it and then you come and try to impersonate that old account with a new one the system has good reasons not let you do that and not telling the potential identity thief about these reasons is the right way to do it.
This might be a way to protect people who really don't want an account from having their identity stolen. If you deleted your account, one of your connections could see that and make another one in your name to mess you up.
I don't know what you mean. People are saying that Facebook wouldn't allow them to reuse their own old username. I think it's to prevent identity theft as someone could pick up any deleted username and pretend to be the old owner. They could even re-add the old owner's old connections to establish the scam. A few people might think "I thought I was already connected to this guy!" but most wouldn't think twice if they saw that the username and photo were the same.
I think it makes sense to allow reuse of usernames, but only after a sufficiently long period of time. I don't know if 20 years is enough, but something in that ballpark would be needed to reduce the risk of identity theft.
Probably, but I already didn't like FB. I was just doing it as a checkbox to say we were on FB too. Once they were actively hostile to me it was no longer worth it. As a matter of course, I try not to interact with hostile people or companies if I can help it.
For all the bots that clearly get through, they have some pretty onerous algorithms at work to figure out if you’ve ever had another account. It seems to matter not whether you use a different email or IP address. The same name alone seemed to be enough for them to lock a business account I was trying to create.
They’ve gotten a LOT more aggressive I think. About 12 years ago I created a second account in my own name for use exclusively with family, and never had issues with that one. I think that part of their risk analysis is that whatever risk analysis was performed at the time the account was created is somewhat sticky. Likely to prevent complaints about changing goalposts.
Of course I don’t use any Facebook/Meta property anymore.
I find it very easy to stay off their feed of algorithmic garbage, but unfortunately despite being (imo) less usable than Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace is what everyone around me uses.
This is the only thing keeping me from deleting my Facebook account. I recently moved and wanted to sell some things. Listed about 8 things on Craigslist and got some shady replies.
I listed the same 8 things on Facebook Marketplace and sold everything within days...
I applaud the tutorial, but even so it's easier said than done. I deleted mine maybe 10 years ago, before they offered a hard delete option, so all you had to do to un-delete it was log in. Then, Comcast email (yes I used a Comcast email when i created my FB account in like 2008, whatever) got owned and so too did my facebook account. I started getting texts from friends the other week saying my account was alive and posting crypto scams. No way to recover it, since the email was gone. All the account recovery options (even though they have my current email) led to the same void, so now I'm permanently locked out. Facebook is scum of the earth.
I can't delete my account because they blocked any access until I upload a passport scan (despite never IDing previously). Guessing it got triggered by switching IPs/proxies. Any appeal attempts went unanaswered. It does suck that I lost a bunch of personal connections and that they (illegally in the EU I guess) deny me rights to access and delete my data for years now.
When it’s in a status where they’re demanding ID it “should be” deactivated.
Now they will delete the account after some time if if you refuse to give them ID. But they didn’t always do that, which meant they had your data and refuse to give it up. Basically forever.
They’re not a great company and they don’t care about anything. You might be better off claiming you live in California USA and demanding they delete it under CCPA, than to try as EU Right to be forgotten or EU privacy. And that’s dismal too because your laws are supposed to be better than ours.
You should be able to get a UPS store Mail Drop for a month or two while you correspond with them and or the California attorney generals office and raise some hell. Yes it’s garbage to suggest this but it works. They take ID and all that over the web to open a mailbox and “voila I live in California now.” If you have any friends online there , just ask if you can “live there” and get some mail there while you write letters to the AG and or meta
They *have to* comply with the California request. I had to resort to this to get Kinto Share to stop accessing my background and credit every year. (Another trash fire company that doesn’t care how much you beg threaten or cry.)
My instant thought was this was an article from the past and why is it reposted now !! Almost after a decade we are back to this headline again. Probably we will read something like this after another 10 years.
group fitness scheduling platforms use facebook login and disseminate information through their business page, if you hard delete your account you’re hard blocking yourself from local small businesses. what’s so hard about just not using it?
Deleted mine after they refused to let me make a comment on an unrelated group that Gatwick Airport is horrible on a Monday morning. Figured the algorithmic moderation was terrible and likely to waste my time conforming to some narrow and undefined form of speech. Not allowed to make a rational criticism.
Then two days later, rather than fix that, they announce the change to moderation methodology which has benefits to the highest bidder rather than the community.
Smells like another cesspit like X in the making.
Gone! Both are bad. The problem is the platform existing at this point.
> Smells like another cesspit like X in the making.
You act like Facebook isn't already a cesspit. Anyone who claims any mainstream social network site isn't a cesspit is being fruitful with the truth, they're the sum of humanity and humanity sucks.
I deleted my Facebook account years ago and recently tried to re-create a new one. I had to use a different email address but even after doing so and sending them a picture of me as requested, they won't let me re-create an account. Apparently my brand new account that I never used doesn't adhere to their community standards about the integrity of accounts.
I asked them to review their decision and it was a NO... and there are no other remedies.
I kept it and Instagram around for years for older relatives and Marketplace and then by coincidence I’m trying to cut back on internet use and read more so I deleted it over NY this year. It’s surprisingly annoying to do, but the worst thing is having to recover access to anything I logged in with Facebook for.
Funny, I just signed up for a Facebook account this week after the news,having deleted mine in 2017. In my opinion, they are taking a step in the right direction. Clearly others disagree, which is their right. What isn't someone's right is to dictate truth, which is what Facebook will ostensibly do less of. Bravo
Part of the pushback is because they are still dictating what you can say except for some very particular exceptions which give away their true intentions. You're still not allowed to call someone mentally ill as an insult, unless you're doing it homophobically or transphobically, in which case it's now explicitly allowed.
If they'd removed that rule altogether then it could be handwaved as merely "free speech absolutism", for better or worse, but officially stating that certain minorities are acceptable targets of abuse that's otherwise forbidden is something else entirely.
It’s not a mistake or some kind of ambiguous rule that could be misread. Following is the direct quote from Meta’s new guidelines. You can’t insult people based on:
Mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness, and unsupported comparisons between PC groups on the basis of inherent intellectual capacity. We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”
They’re carving out specific minorities to exclude them from protections afforded to everybody else.
It’s exactly like saying: “You can’t doxx anyone on our platform, except Jews because that’s political and religious discourse about where heathens live.”
So here we are in 2025, and this barely gets a mention in the press because they’re so overwhelmed by the president-elect pretending to invade Denmark and whatever.
I’m a middle-aged bisexual man. My childhood and early teenage years coincided with the darkest times of the HIV epidemic. At 13 I was deadly afraid of AIDS, and I’m still trying to overcome the internalized homophobia from those times. For years I just tried to blend in, dated women, eventually got married, had children. I thought society had made real progress, but now it’s starting to dawn on me that it’s a mirage like Roe vs Wade or 1920s Berlin, and it can be stripped away at any time. And I feel like a miserable coward for all these years “just minding my own business” and never stepping up to support the community in any way, letting somebody else do the work. That needs to change. I’ll rather be mentally ill than hide in the shadows.
The resurgence in homophobia (amongst other things) is very concerning. Hell, you have people in this very thread that are making homophobic comments openly, attached to their real name and business portfolio. It seems they've stopped even pretending to not be hateful. I can only hope this is a temporary phenomenon.
Yup. The line about the "non serious usage of 'weird'" is another blatant sign of their true intentions. There's no reason to specify that unless you're upset over it because it was used against conservatives.
Lets give them time to cook. It's likely the team refactoring these rules are mostly the same team that was leading the previous censorship. It's going to take some time to open back up.
I consume on social platforms, rather than creating. I was growingly aware of the platform's bias on the content I saw and opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it, anyway). The changes this week are a step in the right direction as other viewpoints are more possible, let alone tolerated.
> opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it, anyway)
I'm genuinely curious to know what about reality warrants "as close as one can get to it". In my experience, every time I close the browser and step outside I'm generally convinced that what I'm experiencing is real.
Precisely. As humans, we use our senses to discover what is true and to what degree. When online, there's always a reality distortion machine running; the question is how much distortion is taking place
Eh, I'm just assuming OP holds views that a lot of people here disagree here with (thus end up getting downvoted), and writes it off as "not allowed to say it" here. That's usually the gist of why people complain about freedom of speech nowadays, regardless of their ideology. Yes, I understand there are billions of exceptions, and I understand how users get banned for "wrong think". But that happens literally everywhere, and all you have to do is to be loud enough to piss of the right people.
Everyone wants to be liked, and search for the venues where they can express their views where they would be a part of majority. Basically the reason why people skew towards echo-chambers, in real and digital life.
> That's usually the gist of why people complain about freedom of speech nowadays
At least in lower-stakes online forums, what really grinds my gears is a lack of transparency, where a site or service doesn't explain the moderation or even hides that any action was taken at all.
Or let’s say, it technically can be said, but you get somehow punished (flagged, downvoted, etc) so you learn not to do it anymore. The incentive is simply not there.
There is a logic, the “community” flags to protect their own interests (financial investments, friends working there, etc).
And since the community is from the same group, they defend the same interests.
The more freely we can talk about a topic, the more genuine and thought-provoking interactions it can create (without intentionally hurting the others obviously).
If you filter too much, you get this LinkedIn-bullshit and it makes a message board super boring, as you live in a closed bubble.
Downvotes don't hurt me. They stop being a disincentive when there is no clear reason for them. It's often people just misunderstanding, misinterpreting or misreading comments and the replies keep flowing anyway.
It's not like you get paid for getting upvoted and a making any kind of joke is usually the fastest way to a downvote.
What about the damage done by the millions of lies that people post on the platform to spread their bigoted agendas? What about how these platforms' algorithms ostensibly promote hatred and shocking material?
Just look at the Rohingya massacre [0] and tell me you're OK with it.
That’s a shallow take. Opting for community notes without any fact checking will transform truth from facts to “loudest voice”. So, who can yell louder will be accepted as the flag of truth, which is very dangerous.
Of course, if you like your propaganda well-done, Facebook will be a great place for that.
I've found X's community notes for the most part to be informative and "neutral", they're usually used to add context to posts when people cut the important parts out.
The feature was not bad when it was first introduced, but I don't know how it fares against brigading and more targeted psyops by bigger actors.
Also are we absolutely sure that community notes have immunity from moderators and they're not manipulated in any way?
Community notes are indeed a good feature at first blush, but considering the current climate of "freedom of speech / post-truth / let's move fast and break society norms", it's more dangerous than a group of allegedly biased fact checkers.
It's a way of deregulating the social media platforms to level of utilities which carry whatever passes through them without prejudice, and shifting blame to the people for believing what they read.
The thing they're designing is very ripe for manipulating people en masse.
You're right, it's a shallow take in response to a straw man of my position. Clearly content moderation is a HARD problem and the decision-makers at Facebook know this better than almost anyone. They made a decision that presumably was in their best interest, of which I happen to support.
Not sure what anyone here gains from a reductive comment like this. In case it wasn't clear, obviously that's not what I'm saying -- I was curious why you'd be OK with a reduction in fact checking when the platform is a means to such despicable acts.
After living in China for 10 years and experiencing true suppression of freedom of speech, the desire of many here in America to silence others in the name of curbing "misinformation" is wild to me. I have no desire to replicate what they have in China here in America. Free speech is a precious thing on this planet. The only acceptable solution to speech one doesn't like or agree with is more free speech. Silencing people that you don't agree with is not something anyone should support.
It's the cult of superficial thought. Hate speech is a small price to pay for the fight against censorship. But there is a not-insignificant amount of people that look at the hate speech, think it should be censored because it's bad, and literally think no further about the potential consequences of censorship.
Yes, lies are bad and dangerous, but censorship is much worse and far more dangerous.
Misinformation is why we ended up in Iraq. Misinformation caused January 6th.
As anti-maskers laid dying in their hospital beds they denounced the misinformation they had been fed. Lets not pretend that misinformation is entirely impotent.
And let’s not pretend like the internet hasn’t exploded the reach misinformation.
How about we settle for a middle ground where Americans are allowed free speech on American platforms but let’s not give foreign actors/governments the same freedom?
Yeah I think this subject is a lot more nuanced than what people like to admit. We shouldn't allow hate speech and misinformation to flourish, but what constitutes as such is in many cases subjective, and leaving that up to corporate oligarchs, or anybody for that matter, is a scary thought.
While I'm all on board with deleting Facebook accounts - and deleting Facebook itself - the timing of this push is odd. Now that Facebook claims to open up the platform for a wider view than just the desired narrative is the time to get rid of your account? Please explain to me how it was better to be held on a short leash than to be allowed to run out that leash a little bit.
I never had a Facebook account and as such I can not delete it but had I had one the time to delete it would have been when they started censoring anything which went against the desired narrative - probably around the time of the SARS2 unpleasantness - and not now that they claim to have been too censorious and 'promise' to allow more free speech. The same thing happened when Musk turned Twitter into X which makes me wonder why some people are so eager to embrace the censor and shun those places where he was kicked to the curb (even if I don't trust anything Zuckerberg says on this subject, he has shown his true colours a long time ago and they are dark and unpleasant to look at).
That can be very subjective. Facebook tolerated groups where online dating users doxed and smeared each other. What passes for "hate" these days is ridiculous, and they only care about certain views deemed unpopular anyway rather than the entire set of awful content.
Also on the subject of FB moderation, I distinctly remember seeing a photo in my timeline that was censored like adult content. I clicked it, and it turned out to be some Christian thanking Jesus for something good. Real hateful content, that.
People have documented it. I didn't know there was a lawsuit but these groups definitely existed and managed to continue at least for long enough for them to be exposed. There was at least one of these groups in several major cities.
> There was at least one of these groups in several major cities.
Is there an "are we dating the same guy?" group for every city? Sure I believe that. Do 100% of those groups commit Doxing? Well, that I'm not so sure of.
In fact, I've literally never heard of that before, it doesn't sound like the objective of the group. So I googled it and I found one case where a guy is arguing that people in the group manipulated his messages and so he's suing Meta for Doxing.
Also, if you read closely you might be confused like I was. Defamation is not Doxing.
So if you have evidence of Doxing in these groups I would love to see it.
At any moment in time there are peopl "only realizing it now", so any time of a push for deletion of FB account is a good time. Maybe not the best, but a good one.
What free speech? The moderation changes explicitly say you cannot label Republicans as mentally-ill, for example, but you can label gay people as mentally ill. If you are cherry-picking who can say what, this is not free speech, so don't label it as so.