Meredith Shamburger

I believe it was during my senior year in high school when I first joined Facebook. Perhaps my junior year–it’s been so long, I can’t be quite certain.

Facebook was the new social media wunderkind on the Internet playground. I wasn’t that impressed.

What am I supposed to do with this thing, anyways?

Facebook was similar to MySpace, but truthfully, I didn’t really see a point in joining either. Eventually, I would have both (And I can’t remember which I joined first because I once joined Facebook then promptly left and then later joined again). But things were different back then, sometime between 2006 and 2007: The biggest change was that it was a closed network that required a college or high school email. I clearly remember this fact because I had to use my newly acquired Carthage HS email account (Thank you, Mr. Worley) the first time I registered.

Facebook didn’t really take off until I came to college. After all, college was where it had been birthed. In college, I learned to love Facebook and it’s spying capabilities. I mean friend-keeping-up-with. That’s what I used it for (*cough, cough*) In fact, I was the one trying to actively recruit my friends from high school onto the network. They were stuck in MySpace, languishing amid the personalized-to-the-point-that-made-you-want-to-gag profiles.

But yesterday I deleted my account.

I had been considering doing so for a couple of months. I wasn’t really using it all that much. Besides which, Facebook’s many privacy snafus (although great for spying) irked my sensibilities. I didn’t sign up for Facebook when everything was public. I signed up when it was a closed network. Now it has the gall to decide for me what I should make public? That’s just not kosher.

The catalyst was a Wired article (which you should go read now). Basically, it listed everything that Facebook had changed:

• Taking private information and setting it to public by default: city, name, photo, friend list, fan pages
• Fill-in-the-blank likes on your Info page? Now public and linked to profile pages OTHERWISE you don’t get anything—”though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.”
• Sending my profile information to other sites such as Pandora, Microsoft and Yelp.
• Making all status updates public and search-engine-findable
• Making all status updates appear on relevant fan pages
• The Facebook “Like” button (and mandatory public setting)
• Going after third-party sites
• Censoring emails
• Giving my information to third-party applications because someone else took a “What Gilligan’s Island Character Are You?” quiz (and letting applications store your information indefinitely)

Other irritations that the article left out: Beacon, the many, many site changes (why does Facebook feel like it has to become Twitter?!) and FarmVille. Oh, how I hate FarmVille.

After considering all that has transpired and all that I’ve put up with over the past few years, I decided to leave.

The most annoying part of all? To actually delete your account, you’ve got to search for “delete my facebook” to find the link that will actually erase your profile from the site forever (within 14 days, mind you). “Deactivating” your account simply renders it invisible. That way, should you feel the need to come back, you’ll have an easy time (simply log-in!). Facebook still stores all of your information.

Of course, they make sure to pile on the guilt when you deactivate, showing you pictures of your friends and captions that read “So-and-so will miss you!”

Deletion? Just a simple message saying Are you sure you want to delete/It will take up to 14 days. But I suspect that’s only because they don’t expect you to ever find it in the first place. No sense going all out if no one can find it.

It’s been a day since deletion. I feel just fine.