An Easy Fix To The Facebook Account Delete Issue

Over the past few weeks, the tech blogospehere has been up all night writing posts about how Facebook makes it nearly impossible to delete an account. And this weekend saw a bunch of posts with regards to a specific user and why his account was reinstated. I’ve been thinking about a way for Facebook to fix the user deletion issue and the fix is actually quite simple. It appears the process is so complicated and/or different than other online services that there’s a Facebook group setup just to help you delete your Facebook account.

From what I understand, the current process to delete/cancel a Facebook account is as follows:

• user visits the account deletion page
• user goes through all of the steps to delete their account — confirmations, captchas, etc.
• once user makes it past all of the security clearances then clicks the final deletion button
• account is still “live” but is now placed into a 14-day hold period. If during the 14-day period, user has logged into Facebook, their delete request is removed.

The 14-day delete window appears to be the issue – this is not a typical behavior of a Web app. The Facebook delete group notes, “You must NOT log in to, or interact in any other way with Facebook for at least two weeks, as it will cancel the deletion request. That includes NOT logging in to Facebook using any client (like the iPhone app or IM:s like Pidgin), NOT clicking embedded Like-buttons on other websites, NOT logging in to other services using Facebook Connect (like Digg) etc etc.”

Here’s how I would fix the delete issue which would provide a much improved user experience for the user and for any visitors that visit the user’s profile or page.

• user visits the account deletion page (same)
• user goes through all of the steps to delete their account — confirmations, captchas, etc. (same)
• once user makes it past all of the security clearances then clicks the final deletion button (same)
• account is now deleted – meaning it is no longer visible by anyone – when a person visits the user’s profile or page, a message that the account has been deleted is displayed
• user has 14 days to cancel the delete request – the only way to cancel the request is to login to their Facebook account and click the reactivate button. Any other usage (social plugins, like buttons, Facebook connect) will not work – the user will receive a “your account has been deleted” message.

The change I am proposing is to delete the account from view immediately and require the user to login and un-delete the account within 14 days. This is different than the above procedure that leaves the user’s page in limbo for an extra 14 days. My suggested change will finish the process immediately and as long as the user doesn’t login they have nothing to worry about and the page will be perm-deleted. In the current model, the user is left wondering if the page will ever be deleted or if they need to tip-toe for the next two weeks to make sure not to accidentally re-activate their page.

I look forward to feedback from Facebook personnel on my delete account suggestion.

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