Online Hygiene - Why I Reset My Facebook Account

On April 24, 2016, I did the unimaginable… I reset my Facebook account.

Since Facebook itself doesn't offer a clearing option, resetting in practice means deleting the account and creating a new one. In the world of today, where for many people 'having a Facebook account' is equivalent with 'existing', resetting the account amounts to dying - and then coming back from the dead.

The reactions were as expected:

The most frequent question was: why?

Why?

Imagine that:

  • You have dirt under your bed.
  • You left the cheese on your kitchen counter.
  • You spend all the money you earn.
  • Your tooth aches.
  • You post silly Facebook posts.

Right now, none of these are problematic. But eventually...

  • Where you had no carpet, now you have a carpet of dirt.
  • Your cheese rots, messes up your kitchen, and attracts mice.
  • You lose your job or fall very ill and you have no money to pay for rent.
  • Your tooth goes bad and has to be pulled.
  • The opinion of your stupid/naïve 16-year-old version goes public as if it was the opinion of your current slightly less stupid/naïve self.

Oh, only if you could have avoided these awful scenarios. But hang on, you could have! For example:

  • You do vacuum cleaning in your room before dirt floods over you.
  • You put the cheese in the fridge before it rots.
  • You save money for emergency scenarios.
  • You go to the dentist while your tooth is recoverable.
  • You delete your Facebook posts before they go public.

The Facebook posts of my 16-year-old self are like the rotting cheese - they were great once, but I don't want anyone to look at them anymore.

The same way you brush your teeth every day to avoid an awful outcome, you can regularly clean up the mess you leave online. This is, simply, online hygiene.

But you were fine with your posts at some point. What changed?

Two things changed.

1) My personality changed. The opinions and actions of the person 10 years ago are different from the person today. But if we all know this, why is this a problem? The problem is that the larger, impersonal audience tends to think that people are static - people like to build an eternal but two-dimensional image of a person. You see this again and again when politicians' idiotic stories and celebrities' comments from their youth come to light and the population makes a big deal out of them.

Am I ashamed of my past self then? No, I am not. This is because 1) I know I have a solid moral compass 2) I know I have weaknesses and make mistakes (like everyone does). Unfortunately though, this is not how the "generic public" thinks - and what others think can sometimes matter.

2) The audience has changed. Facebook started out as a tool to share statuses and pictures with a limited audience - my friends and some closer acquaintances - but over time it has been converging towards something like a glorified telephone book[1] (or MSN Messenger if that means anything to you). At the time of deletion, I had over 1000 "friends" with full access to my full post history. While I have higher trust in the original audience, the same doesn't hold about the current one.[2]

Not cool.

As a result of the two, basically any random person (or government agency) could have (and might have) collected all information from my profile and used it in some probably malicious way at some point. Is this high risk? No. Is it worth taking the risk? No... Just because the chance of a car accident happening to you is small, you're still better off putting on your seat belt - you don't lose anything but you could gain a lot.

So. The deletion.

So, after a bit of rumination and some helpful reminders from Facebook ("here's your post from 5 years ago - do you want to share it?") I downloaded my data (yes, it is a risk), deleted my account, and created a new one. If you're planning to do the same:

  1. Remove your primary email address first so you can use it for your new account.
  2. Don't forget to save your friend list (if you're a programmer: Graph API identifiers don't help...).
  3. Create your new account before deleting the old one, in case something goes wrong.

Also note that your messages are not deleted - they also belong to the people on the receiving end.

"Did those '5 years ago today' notifications help you make your decision?"
"YES"

At the end of the day, your public appearance matters, so you take a shower, shave, and get a hair cut. The same applies to your online presence. Why not take your basic hygiene online?

Footnotes

  • [1] A 'telephone book' is a contact list printed as a book.
  • [2] Note that this telephone book aspect is also why I didn't remove my Facebook account altogether.

Many thanks to GCs and BG for their input.