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When I was your age – you could delete your social media accounts

46 points by thomasfromcdnjs ↗ HN
This is just a rant, but I'm sure HN would have some kindle to throw on the fire.

As a part of my new-years-eves-goals-that-I-likely-won't-achieve I promised myself to delete all my social media.

I found all the small hidden buttons to delete my account, but in recent years, unbeknown to me, apparently I am not allowed to delete™ my account.

Essentially all the platforms have only let me deactivate my account but have promised™ me that they will delete it after 30 days.

I'm no luddite nor am I naive, I well-know that most apps will just archive my data and make me live on as some ghost user.

Though the reason I wanted to quit-for-a-while is because of addiction. I wanted to turn over a new leaf, a fresh start.

But now I still have a few weeks to resist the urge to log back in, ugh.

I've emailed a bunch of support teams, here is the last reply I got from a company.

> Thanks for reaching out to the Community Support Team. To maintain the integrity of our process, there is a 30-day period before the account is permanently deleted. Unfortunately, we are unable to fulfill your request. If our policy changes, we'll let you know right away.

Integrity.

19 comments

[ 5302 ms ] story [ 292 ms ] thread
Nextgrid
You can change the password to a random one (`pwgen -s 30`), request account deactivation and then discard the password.
math_denial
And use some temporary email if possible so you can't use the "I firgot my password request".
vmception
You can delete it faster by posting a lot of porn
egberts1
I could delete my social media accounts then but now social media deletes my accounts because I gave them my VoIP phone number.

- Oh well. No loss there.

account-5
I've found if you accidentally mistype you date of birth some companies automatically lock you out of your account, and delete it in a shorter period of time unless you prove your age.
ab_testing
Yes, I agree. If you change your age to below 13, then they will rush to delete your account.
mission_failed
If you add an Apple family account under 13 Apple helpfully prevents the adult account from changing the DOB, or removing the account, and forces you to give permission to install every app that you have previously allowed in your account.

And the child account passwords have to meet that same secret rules as standard ones, like rejecting 13 char passwords because some of the letters make up a word.

It's like Apple goes out of their way to make every experience as worse as possible.

im3w1l
I think the reasons you cant immediately delete it are twofold: 1. To prevent a hacker / sibling from deleting your account. 30 days means the rightful owner of the account has time to respond. 2. Because your data is processed by batch jobs that run every x days. And the easiest way to delete that is to just not generate it on the next run.
thomasfromcdnjs
Yeah, I agree with the reasons. Though I did suggest several times that I want to delete my account and willing to approve it via MFA. At that point I imagine it's probably too costly for that level of support. Hence why I put "rant" in my preamble.
ozzythecat
Deactivate the account. Try again after 30 days to confirm it’s gone or send them an email at that point to confirm.

Doesn’t seem like an “integrity” issue so much as, “Well hold onto this in case you change your mind.” It’s literally their business model to maintain or grow their user base. I’m not sure how that’s an “integrity” issue. An integrity issue would be if they tell you your information is deleted when it is not.

voakbasda
Integrity of their business model and profits perhaps, but zero integrity while respecting the intention or agency of their customers.
bytebln
Its like you wanna quit smoking but the Tabacco Company puts a new pack of cigarettes on your table. Its right next to you all the time, you don't have to open it, but if you want, you can.
short12
I'm sorry but as someone with substance abuse issues that may be tempting but cigs and booze are ubiquitous anyways. Being on the table vs the corner store still means it's available at any time
throwawaysea
I don’t want to just delete my accounts but also clear their content (or make randomized noisy edits to post) before commencing deletion, just because I feel like these companies can’t be trusted to actually delete anything. But they also don’t make bulk edits or deletion easy. Has anyone seen tools for this?
philipkglass
I would suspect that post-edits are stored as deltas instead of overwriting originals anyway, so not much point randomizing them if you don't trust the company to delete accounts. On a system I worked on every comment (or comment update) was a unique event. Only the latest was kept for immediate retrieval but I could pull up all events from cold storage if needed for special purposes.
xstefen
Seems like every company has some inconveniently imposed time frame, computer controlled and automated, that seemingly no one in existence has the keys to or power to override. When I was their age, we built the damn things and told them what to do. Hello Skynet
Fktheblaah
Oh how nice when all of HN agrees to bowdown to these social media companies. Oohh, so cute when nobody is critical about it.. I just love people who follow the rules and expect corrupted companies be corrupted.

HN you never suprice me with your over understanding opinions. Let's all hold hands together and pray that evil people will be better tomorrow.