I have been de facto inactive on Facebook for a long time. Haven’t used it, haven’t checked it (and it feels good), so I thought let’s deactivate it.
Except I need to keep Messenger, because that’s where friends from the old country are. (Yes, I need to convert them to something better, but that’s a separate issue.)
To tell the truth, I have tried deactivating my account before, but somehow always got reactivated, and I never really had time to understand how and why. “Some dark pattern”, I presumed, but didn’t really have time to investigate — until now.
First off, the dark patterns Facebook throws at you when you want to deactivate… “Here are some friends who will miss you”, “here is some more info on the choice you make” (which of course takes you away from the deactivation site and you have to navigate back from 0)… but most importantly, this disclaimer:
And yet, when you actually deactivate and then log in again (because you have to) to Messenger, you get this email:
Color me baffled.
The next best thing is actually deleting your Facebook account to make sure they don’t have that historical data, and re-register a minimal account for Messenger.
I’ll wait with this until after 25/May though, so I can do it with the GDPR in effect.