Facebook Sterilization

I stumbled across an article on WalletPop about how to actually delete your facebook account.  I have deactivated it before, but got into it again because of the nasty addictive properties of the social glob.

I deleted my account, finally.  It says it has deactivated it, and if I dont login for 14 days it will be deleted.  How considerate, to give me a second chance, or third, or fourth.

Why delete?  Use a search engine to find “pirate monkey donkey violation cuba” and then load your facebook page.  Wonder how facebook wants to provide advertisements for cuban freakshows, or whatever?  Clicktrails.  Prominent ad servers accumulate data on your clickings about the web.  They compile this into a clicktrail, and profile your browsings about.

This is well and good, supposing you want your browsing experience to be enriched by advertisements.  Sure, ads are a way for sites to make money and companies to advertise relevant products and services to you.  I just dont think they need to know that much about me in order to be able to enrich my browsing experience.  I’ll enrich it myself, thank you.  I’m fairly intelligent, I can find what I want easily enough.

So, here’s a link to a case study of a company that uses AWS to store and compile data about your so called clicktrails.  Here’s an amusing Oatmeal comic demonstrating facebook’s addictive properties.

I’ll agree completely that facebook is in many ways an invaluable way to connect to all kinds of people, friends, family, etc.  I’m just not willing to cough it all up in order to conveniently click “Like” on someone’s status update.