So, it is now official… I am no longer a Facebook user. Facebook and Zynga will just have to go on without my participation in their “spam ‘em and scam ‘em” plot to take over the world.
But I have to tell you, the account deletion process is one that makes me think that Facebook is even more evil than everyone thinks. You have to go to a special website within Facebook that is hidden in so many layers of crap that it’s like looking through a haystack to find that all-precious needle. Then, once you have found the proper link and tell Facebook you want your account deleted, you have to type in your password and a Captcha (my captcha was “New dismays”, which I hope is significant in some small way), and then you get a window that says your account has been deactivated and will remain for two weeks, just in case you change your mind.
Two weeks? Really? That’s kind of like telling your significant other you want to break up, “for the next two weeks you can still call me your boyfriend, just in case we decide to get back together.”
It sort of makes Facebook look like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction” – I now wonder when I am going to come home to find rabbits boiling on the stove with a note from Facebook saying it’s not that easy to give them up.
Am I going to have to stab, strangle and drown Facebook in my bathroom in order for our relationship to be over?
Any decent website who actually cares about its users would make the account removal process easy and quick. No long, drawn out “Are you sure? Oh God, this can’t be happening! PLEASESTAYWITHME!” drama. (Which reminds me, I never checked how to cancel an account on this website. I guess I had better practice what I preach here and make sure that a user can cancel their account painlessly!)
So, I am fully expecting that on August 27, 2010, should I try to log into Facebook (yeah, right, like that is ever going to happen again!) I should come up with something that tells me the account does not exist. Maybe I will check it out, just to be sure, on September 1st. If I can log back in on that date, I will then know just how truly evil Facebook really is!
UPDATE – After getting this post online, I checked my own website to see how a user cancels their account, and discovered that there was no way to do so! I have remedied that issue, and now it is very simple to delete an account on my site. In fact, unlike Facebook, as soon as you say you want to delete the account, the username is removed. I checked this with my own user account, and sure enough, as soon as I hit the button, the account was gone!
Take that, Facebook! Me and my site know how to treat our users who want to leave!
