Facebook fights back, disallows the Suicide Machine
gennaio 5, 2010 6:15
After seppukoo.com another Suicide Machine…is the Web 2.0 finish ?
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via the L.A. Times.
Facebook fights back, disallows the Suicide Machine
Websuicide Like the computer in the movie “2001,” Facebook is struggling to keep its profiles from virtual extinction at the hands of its arch enemy – the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine.
The Suicide Machine is a clever Web site out of the Netherlands that was designed to free users from their social network lives on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. You just pick one of the networks, start up the machine, and it graphically shows you unfriending your contacts, one by one, and eliminating all your other contacts with your profile. Forever.
Although the now-friendless profile actually survives, the Suicide Machine is designed not to allow you ever to sign on to it again.
You don’t want to fool around with it unless you’re serious. Like taking that first step off the Golden Gate Bridge, once you click to start the process on the Suicide Machine, you can’t stop it.
See video, below, on how the machine works and a tongue-in-cheek look at life in the real world after freedom from social-networking sites.
Except that Facebook is now fighting back. The Suicide Machine is reporting that Facebook has banned its IP address, thus foiling suicides. You can almost hear the machine singing “Daisy.”
But this is not the end, swears the Web version of Dr. Kevorkian. The Suicide Machine posted a friendly message on its site: “We are currently looking in ways to circumvent this ungrounded restriction imposed on our service! Thanks for your understanding.”
— David Colker
via Facebook fights back, disallows the Suicide Machine | Technology | Los Angeles Times.
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via BBC news
Facebook blocks social network profile removal service
Once users opt for “web suicide” the process cannot be halted.
Social network giant Facebook has blocked a website from accessing people’s profiles in order to delete their online presence.
The site, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, offers to remove users from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Myspace.
It does not delete their accounts but changes the passwords and removes “friend” connections.
Seppukoo.com, which offers a similar service, was issued with a “cease and desist” letter by Facebook in 2009.
Netherlands-based moddr, behind Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, says it believes that “everyone should have the right to disconnect”.
However Facebook says that by collecting login credentials, the site violates its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR).
“Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely,” the company said. “We’re currently investigating and considering whether to take further action.”
Web 2.0 Suicide Machine claims that it only stores the name, profile picture and “last words” of its clients, who can choose to watch their friend/follower connections disappear in real time as their profiles unlink from others.
“Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web 2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom,” says a statement on its website.
Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web 2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom.
Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
The machine operates on an adjusted Linux server which runs open source software Apache 2.
Seppukoo.com, which offers to remove people from Facebook, received a letter from the social network site’s lawyers in December 2009.
Once they have deleted their friends Seppukoo clients can choose an image instead of their profile picture to remain as a “memorial” .
The site is run by a group called Les Liens Invisibles, and describes itself as an artistic project. The name Seppukoo is taken from a Japanese ritual form of suicide known as Seppuku.
In November 2009 the group orchestrated the “virtual suicide” of a group of fictitious Facebook profiles set up in the names of deceased well-known figures including Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Virginia Woolf.
via BBC News – Facebook blocks social network profile removal service