There is bad news for all those who want to terminate their connections on the Facebook. The popular social networking giant has blocked a website named Web 2.0 Suicide Machine from accessing profiles of people on its site and deleting them.
The website offered service of removing users from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Myspace. It did so by changing the passwords and removing list of friends from the profile of the users.
Justifying its step, Facebook said that the Suicide Machine has violated Statement of Rights and Responsibilities by accessing the details of the users. “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 in a statement. It further added that they are investigating the whole situation and seeing whether any further steps are required.
Meanwhile, Dutch company moddr, which owns Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, said that it believes “everyone should have the right to disconnect.” It also cleared that the Suicide Machine only saves the name, profile, pictures and the last words of its clients who want to see their friend connections disappear real time.
In a reply to Facebook’s step, moddr said in a statement, “Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web 2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom,”
The online suicide service, claims moddr, has been quite successful and said that ever since its launch in December 56,243 friends have been unfriended, 202,386 tweets have been removed and 856 people quit their online lives.
This is not the first time that Facebook has taken such a step. In 2009, it had stopped Seppukoo.com from offering similar service to the users of Facebook. Meanwhile, other social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Myspace have not taken any such step allowing users to continue use of modrr’s software in their site.