It's hard to delete a FB group

[evcom]

I manage a few FB groups, some are stagnating in activity others, are thriving. As I do not really support the business model of FB and their practices, I am thinking to close/delete some groups, eventually perhaps all.

Looking at how to delete a group, I found out that this is rather complicated. In short: The bigger the group, the harder it will get to delete it because each member has to be removed from the group individually before the admin can remove itself > group deleted!

This way Facebook puts in deliberately obstacles, so to retain bigger groups a long as possible. My take is, that many admins of larger groups (that would delete the group if there was a delete button), are not deleting, just because it would a large amount of time to do so.

Is there an alternative? Contacting Facebook and asking them to delete the group should be an option. Has anyone tried this? Are current data protection laws (at least in EU), covering this case? I am curious about your take.

 

[we_are_borg]

Deleting groups is not a real option they archive the group after x time you cant find it anymore.

 

[evcom]

Archiving and deleting are two different things the way it looks.
https://www.howtogeek.com/674796/how-to-archive-or-delete-a-facebook-group

But I guess also a deleted group is somehow just archived in the FB universe. It probably can just not be resurrected anymore by the admin. Unlike an archived group where the admin can reactivate it.

 

[R0binHood]

According to Facebook help, archiving a group is no longer an option.

I'm not a facebook fan by any means, but I get why they'd make it so you can't just scrub the entire group on a whim or make it too easy. The problem with large or active groups, is that bigger the group the more activity, page views and ads they're serving. They're not going to let us get in the way of their bottom line and growth by making it easy to scrub huge groups. They'd rather you pass the reigns onto someone else to manage, if you no longer want to run it.

 

[Pete]

Yet another reason to run the community yourself, no?

 

[zappaDPJ]

A number of forums I used to run went to Facebook in user led rebellions. After a while I was asked by a couple of groups if I was willing to take on ownership if that's even possible? I declined

 

[Pete]

Sounds to me like you had a lucky escape.

 

[zappaDPJ]

I think you're probably right. The funny thing is because everyone used an alias on the forums and their real identity on Facebook I had no real idea if I knew everyone or no one on the Facebook group.

 

[we_are_borg]

A number of forums I used to run went to Facebook in user led rebellions. After a while I was asked by a couple of groups if I was willing to take on ownership if that's even possible? I declined

You can take ownership but the owner needs to leave the group to transfer it over. Its a real **** show the groups and the rules of what can and can’t be done seems to change month by month.

 

[evcom]

I actually tried to reach FB to ask them if they could delete it for me. First challenge is: How to reach someone at FB. It seems the company hides itself between a complicated set of Help Guides and other pages that obscure the way to reach out to them easily. For a tech company quite unusual!

 

[Paul M]

Post a few dodgy links and they'll delete it for you .......

 

[KimmiKat]

FB makes things hard to delete or whatever. Their interest is monetise everything they can.

 

[Douzeper]

You can run a script that removes every user one by one. Its available on a few sites.

 

[feldon30]

I actually tried to reach FB to ask them if they could delete it for me. First challenge is: How to reach someone at FB. It seems the company hides itself between a complicated set of Help Guides and other pages that obscure the way to reach out to them easily. For a tech company quite unusual!

You aren't the customer. You are the product being sold. Google is the same way. This is why I will never get Google Fi no matter how cost effective. If you run afoul of any Google service and they deactivate your account, your phone is dead too, and you cannot reach a human at Google who is empowered to do anything.

 

[Kestryll]

It's not that difficult to have a Group deleted, I've had two iterations of the members group tied to my forum deleted.
Neither time was by request nor did we get warnings but they were deleted, one with over 40K members.

Post a a few guns for sale, put up some suggestive but not pornographic memes, link to a few articles written by immunologists and virologists pointing out falsehoods in the C-19/vaccine stories in the news and share a few articles showing substantial voter fraud in the 2020 election and about the AZ audit.

FB will solve your problem for you and probably quicker than anything you could get done going through 'official channels'.

 

[feldon30]

It is astonishing the control people are willing to hand over to these companies. The idea they can delete a group with 40k members with no recompense and no way to fight it because of a few posts by 1 member...

 

[Kestryll]

It is insane, if you or I tried to exercise that level of control on our websites we'd be opening ourselves to litigation and likely bankruptcy.
But sites like FB and twitter do it all day every day like breathing.

Personally I'd rather not have a members group or a FB/twitter/etc. presence but this is the world we live in today and it's required if only to protect the name.

I didn't start any of the groups but ended up in charge of them since they had the Trademarked name of my forum.

 

[KimmiKat]

And that's one of the reasons governments need to crack down on the tech industries. Too much power in so few hands.

You aren't the customer. You are the product being sold. Google is the same way. This is why I will never get Google Fi no matter how cost effective. If you run afoul of any Google service and they deactivate your account, your phone is dead too, and you cannot reach a human at Google who is empowered to do anything.

 

[zappaDPJ]

It is astonishing the control people are willing to hand over to these companies.

It is although I suspect the average user has no real idea how much they might be giving away.

I actually find it quite fascinating how technology has taken the science of control from the butcher's shop window to being hit in the face by the sausages they* know you want to buy at a price they know they can sell them to you for without you even leaving your desk.
*'they' being the man with all the power of course.

The question on my mind is at what point does the level of control become an abuse of power?

 

[Bionic Rooster]

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg oversaw plans to consolidate the social network’s power and control competitors by treating its users’ data as a bargaining chip, while publicly proclaiming to be protecting that data, according to about 4,000 pages of leaked company documents largely spanning 2011 to 2015 and obtained by NBC News.