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Comment by m1r | Hacker News Reader

I guess people should "deactivate" their socials rather than "deleting" them if they are not entirely sure. I left Instagram and Facebook a year ago but I cam go back whenever I want to.

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Right! I simply abandoned Facebook. Changed my password, deleted my cookies, stopped going there. If I need to, I can look up the password and login. For example, I needed to participate in the event page for the local burn. Then I deleted my cookies again.

Yes. I also don't understand this thing about deleting social media accounts. Just don't login and don't look at the app? Why delete, removing your history permanently?

I suspect there's something psychological going on. The mere existance of the profile and history, not active use, causes mental strain.

Social media is addictive (edit: to some people). It's like telling an alcoholic "why bother throwing away the beer in your fridge, keep it around if a friend comes over and wants to drink, why is it so hard to just not drink it?"

Many people go the extra mile and delete data because they would rather not have a social networking company use it in their absence.

Seems like a big difference though. Deactivating should make all your content hidden until you reactivate.

I don't understand the desire to delete them. It seems to stem from the misconception that this triggers the service to delete everything in their ad targeting profiles. They don't delete everything they know about you just because you delete your account, though, as they maintain those dossiers even about people who don't have accounts.

That's why I keep the account. And there's slim chance of any imposter trying to create one in my place, though I guess after all these years that is less likely.

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