[nakedrobot2]

The instagram TOS debacle some weeks ago was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I recently stopped using Instagram, and requested account deletion from Facebook.

Graph search and its creepy implications were then nothing I needed to find personally objectionable anymore.

I no longer have to complain about the other sleazy, move-the-goalposts, amoral aspects of Facebook Instagram.

This latest one, I have to say, should not be surprising to anybody.

DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT if you don't like it. You will still have friends, I promise :-)

Before you file for account deletion, you might want to do two things:

1) use http://www.picknzip.com/ to download the pictures of you from other people (I have a couple that I liked that I can use for other profile pics, etc.). (The other photos in my facebook albums that I uploaded myself, I already have elsewhere.)

2) associate your facebook account with a yahoo email address. You can download all the contact information of your facebook friends that way (I don't know if this still works, but it did last year)

This is, AFAIK, the only way to export your facebook friends' data

3) go to your full friends list, scroll down until the infinite scrolling loads the whole list. copy and paste this in an email to yourself.

These three steps should ensure that you don't "lose" any data about your friends on facebook, and will allow you to email them later.

[27182818284]

"DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT if you don't like it. You will still have friends, I promise :-) "

Yes, you still will have friends, but you will lose friends, connections with businesses, and other abilities. I swore off facebook for one year after having been on it since...I don't know...maybe 2004 or 2005ish?

The modern Facebook account has everything from a person's college girlfriend, to the pictures of their first born. Yes it has some mundane things like what you ate for lunch, it also has messages from you and your friends debating over the Affordable Health Care Act. For a lot of people, it isn't just flipping a switch. You will not speak as often to that person that now lives on a different coast even though you both have each other's email.

Then there are the things that impact you even though you're still friends with people. For example, invites to events like Halloween parties are often sent by things like Facebook, so even though you see those people once or twice a week, you still become the asshole that has to be filled in while everyone else is already up to speed already.

Then you have local businesses and chains that only have their hours and specials on Facebook (or at least their Facebook account is the only one they actively maintain) Old Chicago in my area is an example. They have a national website, but the specials that change every Tuesday night are only posted to their Facebook page.

Nothing convinced me to invest in Facebook more than quitting Facebook.

[philwelch]

Is it OK if I just don't care and keep my Facebook account anyway? I've never used Instagram (why would I want a camera app with built-in filters to make everything look shitty when I have a perfectly good camera app that makes everything look OK?) and I don't keep anything private on my Facebook account anyway.

[trimbo]

Yikes, there are a lot of sleezy ads on that picknzip page. Like the "installIQ" version of 7-zip.

[superxack]

No reason to use a website like that, you can download your Facebook data directly from the source:

https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467/

[chimeracoder]

I don't think that gets photos of you that other people have taken, though.

If anybody knows a way to get that, let me know.

[unicornporn]

Or you can roll like a haxor and use http://fbcmd.dtompkins.com/ to download other peoples photos of you. That's what I did.

[Auguste]

You can also use a tool like the iMacros plugin [1] for Firefox to automate the deletion of your wall posts, photos, etc., for whatever good that does. It's not like they actually get deleted from the server, but makes me feel a bit more comfortable.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imacros-for-f...

[freshfunk]

"I no longer have to complain about the other sleazy, move-the-goalposts, amoral aspects of Facebook Instagram."

Yet here you are...

[callmeed]

The biggest issue for me is apps in the developer area. I'd love to drop my FB account but I have active projects that use FB login.

[im3w1l]

Well drop everything from your facebook then. Remove all photos statuses, friends, etc.

[largesse]

I have friends who work at Facebook. I still don't know how they rationalize their employment.

[MichaelGG]

Like FB or not (I don't), it provides a lot of value to a lot of people. While it might not promote the ideals some of us "hacker" types have, on the whole, it is not flat-out evil like, say, some of those toolbar companies or botnet groups.

Additionally, apart from writing in PHP, there must be tons of technical fun and deep problems to solve that makes FB fairly unique.

And also, I'm not really sure how unethical it'd be to work for them, even if you felt they were wrong. Unless you're bringing some rare 4-sigma value to FB, it's likely they'd just get someone else. Might as well be you, where you have a chance to influence things.

[vonmoltke]

In addition to that, they do some good for the larger community, such as starting the Open Compute Project (http://www.opencompute.org/). That effort is what has me considering Facebook as a next career step (I would love to work on that stuff).

Now, this is not an attempt to defend Facebook's actions here or in their other recent efforts. I am merely providing another point of evidence to support MichaelGG's point that Facebook is not flat-out evil, and provide a reason someone might want to work for them despite their recent behavior.

[largesse]

Yes, I know all of that but weighed against the new social graph search and (what appears to me) to be a disingenuous and constantly shifting privacy policy, it isn't much.

[yuhong]

I still remember SPYW, when sharing across Google services got overblown. It is nothing compared to Facebook automatically making your data public that wasn't public before.

[rachelbythebay]

I don't know about them, but I know someone from a different company who has it all figured out. Every time their company does something nasty, they just donate to the EFF.

Must be nice to have it wrapped up all tidy like.

[CamperBob2]

It seems like a legitimate way to reconcile one's conscience with the realpolitik of modern IT employment, engaged as we are in building the surveillance state/police state/nanny state we were all warned about by 20th century novelists and historians.

I try to do this when I buy an RIAA-published album or watch a Hollywood film. I make sure I donate an equivalent amount to civil-liberties orgs (EFF, ALA, and others) during that year.

"Carbon credits," basically.

[guscost]

Kinda funny, when I inadvertently buy a TV show or movie that features global warming propaganda, I donate the same amount of money to Climate Audit or Bishop Hill.

[lancewiggs]

I have to admit it is quite astonishing to see someone denying climate change is a huge issue on a site dedicated to computer-logic based businesses that are future-focused, a site populated by many under 30.

Climate change is the primary challenge for the next few generations, and once we move on from 'debate' we see that there are a wealth of opportunities in mitigation, reduction of CO2 output and coping with the impact. Just ask Elon Musk.

[guscost]

I emphatically disagree with the "overwhelming judgement of science" when it comes to this issue. And I'm thoroughly disgusted by the profiteering that accompanies the global warming campaign. Let's see who is in denial 20 years from now.

Permalink For Great Justice: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1990/to

[bitcartel]

Ask Freeman Dyson, he might surprise you.

[1] http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pa...

[sp332]

You shouldn't be too surprised. Odd politics are rampant in computer science. Stallman, Chomsky, etc.

[vl]

Just to clarify, you think that there is no "climat change" a.k.a. "global warming"?

[CamperBob2]

There is a wide gulf between "thinking that there is no climate change" and agreeing with the politicization of the issue at every opportunity by authors, actors, and journalists who often are not particularly well-informed on the subject.

Your comment's actually a pretty good illustration of the effect the grandparent is (probably) talking about.

[guscost]

CamperBob2 gets it. You're playing with a straw man and a neologism.

[Snoptic]

What movies have this?

[guscost]

The first episode of The Walking Dead comes to mind. I'd also volunteer Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow, but those are a bit too obvious and not worth the money.

[arankine]

Conscience offsetting.

[meaty]

Ugh. Very insightful.

It wouldn't surprise me if some startup starts trading conscience futures!

[CamperBob2]

Considering that the movement of money is all that ever changes anything in today's world, I don't think that's a bad idea. I'd listen to their pitch, put it that way.

[kirubakaran]

Prior art: Church selling indulgences in the middle ages.

[taftster]

Undoubtedly their rationalization is in the form of USD.

[Permit]

It sounds like you need to take a moment to consciously reflect on the fact that not everyone cares about privacy to the same extent you do. I don't just mean the privacy of others, but their own privacy as well. To many people, the loss of privacy that comes from being searchable is more than offset by the value they get out of Facebook.

[meaty]

I think it's more that most of the users are ignorant of the privacy implications.

[wildranter]

Really simple. They need to pay their bills.

I'm sure your frinds rather be working for some project that would make the world better (hey Linux, I'm at you!:) But, still, they have to pay bills.

That's life. Don't like it? Change it.

[guelo]

Anybody working at Facebook can get multiple job offers in the bay area within a week.

[zcid]

I've never bought the excuse about "needing to pay the bills". If you are wiling to compromise your convictions for money, how strong are those convictions in the first place.

It reminds me of a friend of mine whose wife works for the TSA at the airport. Honestly, I have zero respect for her, but hey, at least she can pay her mortgage right?

While Facebook isn't on the same level as working for the TSA, it is definitely a company that appears to be run by people of questionable moral character, and I would absolutely not want to be associated with them.

[pdonis]

People can have different opinions about the ethical implications of their job. Even if you think organization X is doing some wrong things, do you try to change it from without, or from within? I think that's each person's individual decision to make. Rather than second-guess their choice, why not focus on what their company or organization is doing wrong or could do better?

[mike_herrera]

It heavily depends on management's alignment.

[wildranter]

1st ¶: surely you've never been in the situation where you didn't have a parent to pay your rent or daily needed meals. Prove than and then you'll have the right to question how others make their money,

2nd ¶: your friend loves her, and she helps him to lift the weight. Who are you to question that?

3rd ¶: thank god your parents are such great persons.

[zcid]

I currently deliver pizza for a living. There have been times in my past when I ate a dollar menu burger from McDonald's once every couple of days. I am well aware of what poverty is.

That's irrelevant though. Is morality relative to your current financial situation? Is it ok to do wrong in order to make money?

There are plenty of jobs available. People just want to be picky about what jobs they take. If a person justifies a salary because other jobs are "beneath them" or they don't provide the standard of living they desire, that person has compromised themselves.

I have done many things in my past of which I am not proud, but I try every day to keep that list from getting longer. The only way the world will improve is if we all become more conscious of our actions and their consequences. Any other course is selfishness.

[Snoptic]

A can of refried beans is cheaper, healthier, and tastier than a dollar burger.