I spend a lot of time on the Internet; I'm a web designer, so this is probably to be expected, but a lot of that time is spent looking at pointless, ridiculous and sometimes downright stupid stuff. This isn't really much use to anyone (apart from throwing the occasional link to you lot if it's particularly pointless, ridiculous or stupid) but every so often I come across something that actually keeps me interested for reasons other than the obvious "point and laugh" factor.
One such find is the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. Some of you may have already spotted this on your world-wide-webly travels but for those of you haven't, or those of you have but are thoroughly confused, the basic idea is thus:
The Suicide Machine lets you do just that - commit suicide. Not in the "traditional" sense though (if there is such a thing), but what I suppose you could call "cyber Hari Kari". It's pretty simple - you input your login details for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn and their server-side scripts trawl through your account changing your password, deleting friends, photos, wall posts, bulletins, tweets, status updates, comments, etc etc etc, until your presence on the site is all but removed.
This has its advantages - to my knowledge, deleting your account on Facebook won't get rid of anything you posted on other peoples' walls, your connections etc - there's even an option to reactivate your account after you've "deleted" it, so all your data is still being stored on their servers after you've supposedly closed your account. (Technically, I suppose your information would still be there after you commit suicide, but it would eventually be cached out and you'd disappear forever...)
Seems like quite a good idea, doesn't it? After all, MySpace is basically dead as far as personal profiles go and Facebook is slowly turning into a bloated monster. I've lost count of the amount of "Facebook is shit", "I hate Facebook", and "All I ever do on Facebook now is join groups" that I've seen over the past few weeks - I'm pretty sure there's even a group now for people who like to join lots of groups. Give it a few days and you'll probably be able to join the "group for people who join groups about how shit facebook is because all you ever do is join groups".
I'd like to take minute to expand on this point if I may. Don't get me wrong, I like social networking sites, I think the concept is a great idea and I have to admit that I get a lot of work done through Facebook, either through advertising or directly talking to people. But... way back when, in the days when Facebook didnt look as smooth as it does now but ran seventeen times quicker, it was a joy to be able to log on and have a decent chat with someone. After the horrors of Myspace letting people insert their own HTML wherever they liked, it was positively uplifting to be able to connect with your friends without their badly-coded profile slowing your computer to a crawl or their catastrophe of an animated background inducing a seizure as you hopelessly tried to click the back button and escape the grip of Murdoch's Inferno.
But that was in the days when people still used MySpace. This is 2010 and the ranks of pre-pubescent young'uns who've just graduated from Bebo aren't going to MySpace anymore, they're going straight to Facebook. This influx of pre-teen users is great for Facebook - they get to boast about their vast user-base, their targeted adverts become even more targeted and generate even more revenue, and their brand value is boosted as all the teeny boppers go round singing its praises or wearing their logo - does anyone remember the "MySpace Whore" t-shirts, for example?
Now obviously, this doesn't really affect you or me (assuming you're not 12), because I'm definitely not going to be buying a "Facebook Whore" t-shirt anytime soon and I've got adblock installed so their "targeted" adverts telling me that there's hot single women in my area who want a shag right now never even see the light of day.
But then - Facebook released their API. A great idea at first glance but a year or so later and I'm now inundated, daily, with notifications asking me to grant privileges I didn't know existed to applications I've never used or heard of because someone I've never met wants me to join them in Farm Wars and grow some cabbages.
I can't see what my mates are doing because the Small Brown Turd that such-and-such-a-body found in their U-bend while they were playing ToiletVille is more important. I'm not stupid, I know how to hide applications from my news feed, but that doesnt make it any less annoying and doesn't stop new ones from popping up on a daily basis.
And the worst thing, is that I get dragged into it all. I find myself, as I'm sure a lot of you do, checking to see what Person X said to Person Y, even though it's got nothing to do with me. Would it really matter to me if I didn't know what you're doing right this second? Probably not, but I'll comment on it anyway. Or better still, click "like" - because the activity is obviously so enthralling I can't even fathom a response to it.
You see what I'm getting at. Loads of people do it, getting sucked into a trivial world of stuff that really has no bearing on anything. Yes there are exceptions, of course there are - what do you think we used FB for in the first place? When it comes to arranging to meet up, letting people know about a gig or whatever, it can be invaluable. But I really, really am not interested in your "fine" (mine was £575.60, by the way), what you just had to eat, or the colour of your underpants - yet I still read the stories.
So, the Suicide Machine. A way to end the spoon-feeding of brain-numbing information forever and get outside, maybe read a book, watch a film, or even get on with some work if you're office user. Well, it would be, if Facebook hadn't slapped them with a cease and desist, claiming the site infringes their terms of service (or "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities" as FB eloquently puts it).
The instant pull-quote from the letter (PDF!) goes something like this:
It has come to Facebook's attention that Moddr, through its Web site located at www.suicidemachine.org, is (1) soliciting Facebook user log-in information, (2) accessing Facebook accounts that belong to others, (3) scraping content from Facebook, (4) sending unauthorized commercial communications, (5) falsely asserting that Moddr has partnered with Facebook, and (6) infringing Facebook's intellectual property rights on and through www.suicidemachine.org.
Facebook demands that you cease this activity immediately.
This is coming from the company that wanted to make your profile publicly searchable, keeps your account information even when you delete it, and attempts to control your life by suggesting who should talk to. Ok, maybe that last one was a bit extreme, but you get the picture. YOU give the machine your login details, YOU allow it to delete you, so how is removing every trace of YOUR identity from a website an infringement of someone elses terms of service?
Without turning this into a philosophical rant about how it's not your identity the moment you hit the sign up button, the whole thing just seems ludicrous. Its your information so why dont you have the right to let someone, or something, else remove it? If you gave your password to a mate and told them to go through and delete everything you'd ever posted, would that still be against their "SRR"?
The fact of the matter is this - Facebook is useful. It just loses this usefulness when you have too many friends you dont talk to and too many applications you don't need. You can't use the Suicide Machine at the moment while they're embroiled in this legal stuff, but a good place to start would be getting rid of people you don't know, shit you dont need, etc.
Our lovely editor James has pledged to stop going on as much and I can already tell he's spending less time rotting his brain just through the quality of conversation.
Once we're back to just being friends with people we're actually friends with, maybe things will get a bit less mind-numbing.
And if they don't, well, you'll just have to wait for the Murder Machine.
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