Saturday, February 20, 2010

Is Delete() == Hide() for Facebook?

As you all may have noticed facebook was having some problems today, as mentioned here. Interestingly when I tried to delete my status message today, the prompt I got was as usual, "Delete post: Are you sure you want to delete this post?". But when I clicked yes, another message popped up "Unable to hide minifeed story: Failed to hide mini-feed story". After trying thrice it did delete. But what does this error message point out? Facebook never deletes stuff in real; it just hides them from your view.

So I feel unlike twitter, facebook deletion is not a permanent delete, but a mere hide. Once you put it there, it will be there for an unknown period of time. Of course, it is obvious that there is no way of permanent deletion* of facebook accounts. Aren't these a violation of user-rights? I'd better go and read the user agreement of facebook (only if I am that much jobless).

* Update: Seems they have enabled the permanent deletion option at the moment. Give it a try!

2 comments:

  1. I agree. A friend of mine chose to delete her account. Facebook simply hides the information and promises that if she logs in again her account will revert to the state it was in when deleted. NOT A DELETE. This does make me question my use of facebook.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes Bockheim..
    Too bad, the reactivate procedure is just a mere log-in. If once we deactivated the account and forgot about it, there would be a great possibility of someone misusing the account, if he could guess the password.

    ReplyDelete

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