Review : "How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free "

As reported in the New York Times article "How Sticky is Membership on Facebook?", it appears that Facebook, the popular social networking behemoth, does not delete user information even after the user has "deactivated" his account. By deactivating the account, the user essentially puts the profile into hibernate mode rather than completely deleting its existence. Certain aspects of the profile can also be traced back to the user via Google search. Facebook representatives explain that this behavior ultimately provides a service to the user as whenever the user wishes to comeback, his information and profile will be available as if untouched. Others speculate that user information is stored for advertising and demographics purposes. One former user has threatened to sue Facebook for it's account management practices and another created a Facebook group instructing others how to delete their account.




My perspective? In traditional media, if you create something, whether it be writing, art, poetry, an article, whatever, as the creator you are the owner of that work. You can transfer your ownership by selling your rights or otherwise "giving" your rights away. But giving away one's rights doesn't make any sense unless there is some benefit to be gained in the process. In this situation, one can argue that the user is giving up his right to his own user developed content in exchange for the privilege of using Facebook's software and other proprietary features. On the other hand however, one can argue that regardless of the benefit gained in the process, most of the information that is in question is private information, for example contact information including telephone number(s), emails, location, personal photographs, etc. and as such it should remain at the discretion of the user if the information may be archived or permanently deleted since the Constitution guarantees the Right to Privacy.



Story update: In a follow up article published by the New York Times, "After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser", Maria Aspen reports that Facebook has created an online form to facilitate the process of deleting user accounts. Initially, the form experienced some sort of technical difficulties as user accounts were still popping up via Google search after Facebook confirmed the account was deleted.


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Hi & Welcome!

Hi everyone,
This blog is about New Media ( as the title suggests) and is connected to a class I'm taking about... New Media : )

First thing first.. what is new media you say? and what is this evolution I speak of?

New Media is a lot of things. The transmission of information through