OPTingOUT

by Kernal Seiden

I recently found myself wanting to delete my social media footprint from the digital world.

Being in my early forties, I have only had accounts on two of the major social networks.  My first was MySpace, my second was Facebook.

I have not accessed my MySpace account since Bush (W) was in office, so I'm sure it still exists out there somewhere.  But it's so irrelevant now that I feel I can probably just let that one go.

For reasons I won't go into in this article, I came to the conclusion that it would be in my best interest to kick my addiction to social networking and delete my account altogether.

Let's face it, with the recent Yahoo! data breach in the news, it's only a matter of time before some wiley "hacker" or disgruntled Facebook employee hacks Facebook and sells every man, woman and child's login info on the deep web for a stack of bitcoin.

Several times in the past, I have had the same thought, only to get frustrated in the effort to "delete" my account, only to find a "cancel" option with no trace or hint of an actual "delete' option.  I looked in the Facebook settings, general settings, security settings, etc...

Now many of you have probably been down this same road, and you know that the "cancel" option lets you suspend your Facebook account, after jumping through several hoops.  Facebook makes it difficult and annoying to cancel your account, and when you finally give your arbitrary reason and several attempts at entering the correct CAPTCHA string, your account is happily asleep.

I'm sure you all know the process of "un-canceling" your account is as easy as logging back in.  The first time I did this, it only mildly registered in my thoughts...  "Surely it is possible to actually delete my account...  Next time I'll look deeper and figure it out."  I have canceled my account at least a dozen times over the years, and every time I did, I got more and more frustrated with the process, and frustrated with the apparent fact that deleting was an impossibility.

Every person I know thinks the same thing, that complete deletion is not possible.

About a month ago, the frustration finally got to me, and I decided to tackle this problem once and for all.  "There must be a way, I told myself.  "There must be a way to actually 'delete' my account."  So I dug, I clicked on every setting option on my Facebook app.  Found nothing.  I deleted the app and logged in through Chrome.  Found nothing.

I clicked on the Chrome option "Request Desktop" so I could navigate Facebook as if I were on a computer instead of my Android.  Found nothing.

I logged on from an actual computer.  Found nothing.  My frustration was building.  Then, I had an epiphany.  I Googled it.  I don't remember the actual search I typed, but it was something like: [How do I delete my Facebook].  Google gave me a search result and a link.

It was still rather convoluted and hard to figure out.  It linked to a Facebook page with about three paragraphs talking about deleting your account.  The end of the second paragraph said something to the tune of: "If you want to delete your account, let us know."  I didn't notice at first, but the "let us know" was a link.  I clicked that link, and in true Facebook fashion, had to jump through hoops, enter my current Facebook password, a CAPTCHA, and shazam!  My account was deleted... sort of.

Facebook claims that it takes up to 14 days to accomplish the task of deleting my account.  Huh???  Wait... what???

I have at least a terabyte of data on my computer and various thumb drives.  Pics, PDFs, software, etc.  I could delete every byte of data I have in a matter of minutes, and you're telling me the talented, genius, plugged-in programmers and hackers that work for Facebook need up to 14 days to delete my little account.

Now, keep in mind, I'm no popular teenage girl with 3000 plus friends, three million plus selfies, who knows how many un-deleted messages from Messenger...  I'm a mild mannered 40-ish guy with around 120 or so friends, about 50 pics, and three videos of me practicing my guitar.  And Facebook is going to need up to 14 days to delete my account?  You're telling me it takes up to 336 hours to delete my account?  It takes up to 21,160 minutes...  I'm sorry.

It just frustrates me to no end that Facebook would tell such an obvious lie about the time it takes to delete anything digital.  And doubly frustrating that the general public will probably just believe that egregious statement.  The fact is, Facebook uses this 14-day lie to tempt users into logging back in.

Anyway... it has been around 20 days now.

I got my girlfriend to look at her Messenger to see how my old messages looked.  To my dismay, the messages are still there.  I really didn't expect them to go as far as to delete my old messages from other people's accounts, but I had hoped that at the very least the messages would say "Facebook user" instead of my name.

In conclusion, I know that in the times we live in, erasing my entire digital footprint is close to, if not impossible.

However, I am still on my mission to at least rid the digital world of my Facebook identity.  I may never reach my goal and, in the end, I will probably give up and start a new Facebook.