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hi my name is Nick Briz and I'm a new-media artist / educator / organizer

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living and working in Chicago[br]Illinois

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and this is a tutorial / personal essay

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video for how to leave Facebook by which I don't mean

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had a click that delete your account button, which doesn't exactly

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delete your account anyways, Facebook[br]uses words like "delete" and

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"like" to mean things that they don't[br]actually this is a tutorial / essay

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video for how to leave Facebook, in a sort of

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performative / activist and[br]slightly glitchy-kludgy sort of way.

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before I explain how to[br]do that I'll explane

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why, and why like this. I should start by saying that this was a

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really really hard thing for me to do

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by which i don't mean technically, it was just personally difficult

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i've been on Facebook for seven years. Its as long as I've been making glitch art as long as it's been

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a new-media artist and facebook's been a[br]big part of my life

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and practice in a lot of different ways[br]over that time

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and on those folks who think Facebook is[br]an addiction nor do I agree with the

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social media luddites that think social[br]media

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is distracting us from "real life". social[br]media doesn't replace a pre-existing

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relationship it augments them

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it helps keep in touch when we are far away and lets us communicate not only in real time

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but also with images and sounds and videos and gifs

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social media and web in general make[br]possible relationships that otherwise

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wouldn't exist

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in 1968 one of the Internet's founding[br]fathers to see our look later

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said with a great deal of for site, "life[br]will be happier for the online

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individual

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because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected

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more by commonality of interests and[br]goals

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then by accidents of proximity" My issue with Facebook is how they've demonstrated time and

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time again

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a lack of respect for their users in the[br]interest of prioritizing

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other interests like those in their[br]advertises in ways that have had some

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serious intended and possibly

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unintended consequences. And this is a long list which has been accumulating for years

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but I'd always love the major ones. first[br]issue is something called the filter bubble

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to some extent you probably expect your[br]streams to be the accumulation

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of all the posts made by the folks you[br]follow in more or less the order they

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were posted in

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this is not always the case and is definitely[br]not the case for Facebook. By default

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Facebook filters a lot into and out of[br]your streams based on what

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algorithms think you most likely want to[br]see. And common sense says

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"awesome why wouldn't I wanna catered[br]stream if the algorithms are working

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well

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then wouldn't i like it?" Not exactly the[br]first problem with common sense here

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is that it makes the assumption that the[br]algorithm has your best interest

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in mind... which is not the case, more on that later

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and so then there's this issue the filter bubble if your algorithm assumes your future

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interest based on your

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past activity you're setting yourself up[br]for what Eli Pariser calls

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"information determinism", essentially your[br]feed becomes a kind

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ideological bubble that never shows you[br]anything you disagree with or don't

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already like

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and so then it doesn't give you the opportunity to change your mind to consider other points of view

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to learn to change to grow. this can get[br]a little heady and I'm oversimplifying

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here

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but you can check out Eli Pariser's TED talk or some of the links I posted in the description

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and I should note that this isn't unique to[br]Facebook to some extent this is true

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of any account you open online. Another big example is your Google search results, this

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is why use use Duck Duck Go more[br]than anything. the second issue

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is that Facebook impersonates you to[br]benefit of its advertisers

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have you ever been scrolling through your feed and noticed something like "Nick Briz and 7 of your

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friends likes McDonald's" and wondered

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"hmmm that's weird I thought Nick was a[br]vegetarian what's he doing like

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McDonalds?"

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somebody makes a post on Facebook with the link and you like their post

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Facebook then assumes you like what the[br]post links to

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so if somebody makes a post about how nasty the new McRib sandwich is

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and they link to McDonalds and you like[br]that post your friend's

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feed, unbeknownst to you, will now include[br]your endorsement

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of McDonalds. Similarly, if you like[br]something from a particular source on

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Facebook, Facebook will assume you like any future posts

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from that source, so say you liked a New[br]York Times op-ed

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on legalizing marijuana you may[br]unbeknownst to you

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like another New York Times op-ed on[br]criminalizing abortion

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or whatever, this is why sometimes you might notice deceased friend liking things

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after the died. Maybe even worse the[br]recycled "likes" is the very blurry space

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between organic and non-organic posts on[br]Facebook

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if you're unfamiliar with these terms[br]organic just means a post that one of your

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friends makes

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and non-organic is something that's paid[br]for like an ad. So, say you make an organic post

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about how much you like your iPhone

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Facebook could then sell that post to Apple so they can use it as an ad

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and your friends will notice that post[br]in their feeds sort of get anchored to the top

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like a sponsored post

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and maybe you're cool with this and[br]maybe you're not, but the point is

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that it doesn't matter because nobody[br]asked for your permission nobody bothered

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to tell you about it...

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...or they didn't bother to tell you about[br]it when they told you they change their

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terms of service and the technically did[br]ask your permission when you signed the

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9000+ word

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Terms of Service. And if you're the kind of influencer that charges companies to

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make promotional posts

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Facebook just cut you out of that[br]equation. And even if you're not in the

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business of making promotional posts

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I think if somebody's using your posts[br]as an ad, you should be getting a cut

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of that

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and i'm not just trying to be greedy here, there's some pretty long-term consequences with this

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there's a reeally great book called "Who[br]Owns the Future" by Jaron Lanier where he

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describes this in detail

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and he also describes what a micropayment[br]system could look like

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where users get compensated for the[br]wealth that the generate on social media

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which up until now doesn't really exist...[br]YouTube and

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and Google Adsense maybe being the kind[br]of exception which brings me to my last issue

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Facebook implements these things in a [br]really sneaky way. And if we noticed and

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if we backlash than they post an apology[br]after the fact

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and retrofit their site with a sort of "opt out"[br]option. But this is never the default

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and they never want to opt out and these[br]changes are made in such a way as to

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keep us in the dark

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and sometimes years can go by before[br]anybody even noticed face but fucked with us

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and one of the worst examples at this came out recently here's a quote from the Atlantic

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"for one week in January 2012 data[br]scientists skewed what almost 700,000

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Facebook uses saw when they logged into its service. some people were shown content

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with the preponderance

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happy and positive words. some were shown[br]content analyzed as sadder than average

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and when the week was over these[br]manipulated uses were more likely to post

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either especially positive or negative[br]words themselves

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this tinkering was just revealed as part[br]of a new study published

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in the prestigious proceedings of the[br]National Academy of Sciences"

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in short, facebook just wanted to see if they could control the emotional states of their

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massive network of

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guinea pigs. and it turns out they can[br]for a week in 2012

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hundreds of thousands of us were made[br]depressed and hundreds of thousands

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of us were made happy. high-fives data[br]scientists

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what's next? so I'll admit have some[br]pretty radical ideas about what I would

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like the web to look like

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and I realize a lot this isn't happening[br]anytime soon. but I do appreciate

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all the awesome shit we have now so I partake in internet culture

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but there's a balance that needs to be met[br]and a line that needs to be drawn

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and it really sucks and it pains me to say that Facebook crossed it

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now I have to leave and this is how I did that. So facebook gives you the option to

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deactivate your account or even

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"delete your account", but keep in mind[br]anytime you upload anything to the Internet

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it's being copied over and over again[br]it's been crawled is being scraped

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when something goes online, its virtually[br]impossible to delete

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so when facebook gives you the option to[br]"delete your account" this is a relative term

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also with something as ubiquitous as[br]Facebook deleting or deactivating your

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account means

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much more than just losing your feed and[br]your information

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it means losing all of my albums, it means[br]losing

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all of my Spotify playlist, it also[br]throws a wrench in a lot of the work

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that I do

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as a new-media artist I produce a lot of[br]work for myself and for clients

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that involves Facebook apps and Facebook Graph so I thought about this for a while

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and decided I wouldn't press the "delete[br]my account" button

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that instead I'd leave Facebook on my own terms

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by manually deleting all of my photos, posts, comments, likes

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by un-tagging myself from everything by[br]leaving all my groups, etc.

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essentially manually wiping out all of[br]my activity on Facebook

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or at least scraping it off the surface. And I've already done all that

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with the exception unfriending my[br]friends which I'm gonna do in a few days

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before i show you how to do this you should[br]probably backup anything that's

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important to you on facebook. if you're[br]like me you probably got a lot of

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sentimental moments on there

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so if you go to your settings Facebook[br]actually gives you an option to

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download a copy of your facebook data[br]and you should do this, but in my opinion

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thiss actually leaves out

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a lot of other important things. So while this download includes all the photos

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you've posted to Facebook it doesn't[br]include all the photos photos your friends have

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posted, and then tagged you in

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Which for me was what initially[br]motivated me to get on facebook

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and what makes up the majority of my photo history over the last seven years

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at this point in time Facebook has no[br]easy way to download all the photos you're

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tagged in

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so i wrote a custom script is to get that[br]done.

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So big disclaimer here, this script and all the other scripts i wrote and i'm gonna share with you in

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this video

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is a sort of brute force hack, its really dirty

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and might take some experimentation.[br]that's just the style of this here tutorial

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as the result the circumstances[br]Facebook has placed me in

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also keep in mind that facebook[br]changes shit all the time with no notice

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But I've posted all of these on github as gists, so you can fork them

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and make any changes if and when they're[br]necessary. So after you download a copy your

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data, go ahead and watch this video[br]were i kinda go through step by step

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how to hack your way to saving a copy of all the photos that your tagged in

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another thing i'm gonna miss is all of my wall posts. there's a lot of really sentimental stuff

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people have posted on there, like birthday wishes and other personal things. So I made this

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other video for had a download a copy[br]of your entire wall

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so after I saved all the stuff that I wanted to save I started wiping out all my activity

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i started with some of the stuff that Facebook makes easy for you to manually remove

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like I removed all of my information from[br]my About section

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I also manually removed

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all of the app's except for some the[br]ones that are connected to other things

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like Spotify

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and some of my client apps. then comes[br]the trickier part

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I want to delete all of my photos but I[br]also wanted to untag myself from all the

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photos my friends have posted

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and Facebook doesn't really give you a quick easy way to do this

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so I also wrote a few custom scripts to get[br]that done which are on the website

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and also on this video where I walk through [br]step by step how to do that

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I also wrote a script for quickly leaving all of your groups. Also documented on the site

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and in this video. And lastly a script for[br]deleting all of my activity

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that means comments, likes, search results, stuff like that

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the video on the site also includes some[br]tips for how to do is a bit more

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effectively remember that this is all[br]kind of experimental

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I notice that if I tried to delete years worth of activity at once

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it would crash my browser and not work, but it worked ok if I did

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a few months at a time. Which is[br]still a lot easier than going through it

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one by one

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although admittedly just as sad. So to recap

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facebook gives you a couple different[br]ways to delete your account, this is NOT

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one of them. This is an alternative based on a different set of priorities

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like i said before, this is meant to[br]be kind of performative

0:10:34.149,0:10:37.779
activist and some what cathartic process. As a right now

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all but my friends list and this post have[br]been removed

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and in a few days I'll be unfriending[br]everyone leaving only

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this post on my Facebook account

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its sad. I'm afraid of losing touch with[br]friends, i'm afraid of missing out

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on future activities and posts on[br]Facebook

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but I hope you all will find me elsewhere on[br]the internets as I hope to find you

0:10:59.649,0:11:01.450
I've got other accounts, f*ck Facebook