I did the one thing Facebook simply can’t handle

And I got murdered (on Facebook) for doing it.

We all suspect that “deleting” anything on Facebook doesn’t really delete it. Our personal information is way too valuable. So hiding, archiving and any other option doesn’t really cut it. Under pressure from the EU and everyone else, Facebook finally provided a way to delete your activity. Of course they hid it in complicated menus which they keep changing.

But worse still, it doesn’t even work.

I know because I regularly delete all my facebook activity. I also regularly delete all my instagram photos. It used to work, now it doesn’t. I resorted to writing a bot to do it “manually”, ie to go and delete everything one by one from my smartphone as if it was me doing it. Obviously Facebook doesn’t think anyone will have the patience to do it like that.

And what happened when I went to Twitter to complain about it?

They suspended my account. With no recourse to recovery according to them. That is how scared they are that more people will follow my example. After all I have always said that it is ludicrous to rely on Facebook or Instagram as a place to keep anything important. Right from the day they started I advocated basing your communications on your website so you can control it all best.

And own it.

This article first appeared on my personal blog because, well, see above, always keep your stuff where you control it!