Facebook as the Hotel California

Jen’s pointed out that you can never, ever leave Facebook. You can only deactivate and suspend your account and if you ever want to go back then you just login again. Whilst deactivated, you still can get the emails.

I ‘deactivated’ my Facebook account. They do not offer a ‘delete account’ option. Click to enlarge the above picture to see what you’re faced with when trying to leave. If you haven’t already seen the video I linked to in the previous post, you should. I am not paranoid, but I am also not stupid*. There are very powerful people involved with Facebook. Something sinister is going on and I don’t like it. I linked to the video in my ‘Other’ reasons for leaving (deactivating) my account. I also requested that they delete my data from their database. I’m certain they won’t.

I read this and went to check what is on there – for me, not too much different than you could see on my other accounts and public places. You make your choice when it comes to the web, but once it is out there, assume it always is and can be grabbed and used by whomever.

2 thoughts on “Facebook as the Hotel California

  1. Thanks for the trackback Rachel. 🙂

    Yes, most T&Cs are similar, but Facebook seems to push it all a bit further and with some really powerful figures at the helm. Just glad I only very minimally filled out the profile with stuff that’s already out there. I’m far from an alarmist most of the time, and certainly fairly transparent as far as my web life goes (no fake names, home address pretty easily obtained), but the Facebook thing smacks of scary Sci-Fi/thriller plot… it’s odd and also goes against the openness the social web was achieving. Shame that.

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