"It's Complicated"

Challenge: Face Value, has been receiving a variety of feedback, both negative and positive. Today the feedback was far different than the other days and one of our responders Aaron (who’s last name will be held) brought up a simple but unique point. Perhaps it is because we are Media Study students, or maybe we are just media obsessed but we had assumed that it was common knowledge to everyone that deleting Facebook put it on standby. This means you can simply reactivate your Facebook by signing back on.

I think this is an important area of concern that needs to be addressed when discussing Facebook. Why does Facebook insist on holding on to our profiles, once we choose to discard of them? Why would they not delete it to free up space? A simple conclusion can be drawn that your information is worth a “pretty penny” to them.

If you do want to delete your Facebook entirely, as appose to “deactivating it”, it is possible. Just be aware it is not as easy. All information can be permanently deleted from your account, although Facebook says “Copies of some material (photos, notes, etc.) may remain in [their] servers for technical reasons, but this material is disassociated from any personal identifiers and completely inaccessible to other users.” They go on to state that “Facebook also does not use content associated with accounts that have been deactivated or deleted”. So I question what are these “technical reasons”?

If you do delete your account, Facebook will not make it easy to escape their grasp. You must submit a request and that request is delayed in their system “…In case you change your mind and no longer want to permanently delete your account.” If during this process you give into temptation and sign back on the pending deletion request is undone.

This was information I had been made aware of during my time at school. Here is what I did not know, and to be honest I am unsure of how I personally feel about it. Did you know you could “memorialize” a Facebook account for someone who is deceased? Meaning Facebook memorialize a person’s account who is reported as deceased by removing all sensitive information like status updates, and restrict the profile access to confirmed friends only. Facebook does state though that they “…do honour requests from close family members to close the account completely.”

What I realized is even though I use Facebook almost every day, and typically more than once there is so much I do not know about it. You think me and Facebook would have changed our ‘fb’ status from “It’s complicated” by now. So it is my hope that in the coming weeks I will not only gain more information on this service I use so often, but I will hopefully be able to finally define our relationship.

posted by: Courtney Wright