Is Facebook removing my friends?

[Ethros]

So this goes out to the Facebook users on here. Ok, I know this will all sound pretty paranoid, but I always know what my friend count is. This is because I look at my page a lot, to read people posts, play around on it, etc etc. And the count is always there on the left hand side. (Its normally around the 200 mark)

Again, may sound slightly insane, but over the years you get people removing you for whatever reasons. But Facebook doesn't let you know this. So a while back when bored I made a list of all my friends so I could see if the count changed who had removed me. Yeah call me paranoid, haha but I just wanted to see who'd done it out of a nosey interest.

Anyway, lately it seems to be going down a lot, maybe one person every week or two. I also just wanna say I never put anything offensive on there, in fact I hardly ever post "updates" or status' and whatnot, so it's not like I'm one of those annoying people who always post tonnes of pointless crap.


And to be honest, and this is the point- I don't really care if someone wants to remove me as a friend, but I'm just wondering now if it is actually them doing or does Facebook occasionally remove your friends if you never interact with them on it?
As the vast majority of folk who I've noticed I'm not friends with anymore are old school mates, work colleagues etc, people I've not seen for a while or every talk to via Facebook.

It just seems odd. As there's a guy at my current job, who I noticed a few weeks ago I'm no longer friends with on FB all of a sudden. Now we've never really interacted on the site, just a simple friendly add (he added me btw.) But if our paths cross in person we always say hi and have a little small talk. When I noticed we weren’t FB friends anymore I thought maybe I'd done something to upset him maybe, but still every time we see each other at work it’s just the normal friendly greetings and so on.



I know what some of the Trek BBS' reaction to Facebook is like, sure there’ll be a few responses like "who cares" and "so what." Like I say, if they wanna do that fine, I just wanna know if it's them or is the website itself "deactivating unused connections" as it were?

 

[Nociod]

Maybe they have deleted their accounts?

 

[Amaris]

It's unlikely that Facebook is removing them. Facebook's strength is on you making more connections with others, not less. People may simply be defriending, or as Nociod mentions, deleting their accounts.

 

[Ethros]

I think you do get the odd people who remove their accounts, but there are just a few people I've noticed when surfing around on it, that I was once friends with them and now all of a sudden I'm not.

Like I say, I'm not really doing anything to piss anyone off. I would barely pop up on anyone's feed as is, I use it to talk to my four closest friends and share info with as we don't live close together or see each other too often, and then talk to a few others on the Chat function. That's about it. Probably have a status maybe once a week.

I guess maybe they could just see me somewhere and think "oh I don't care about this guy anymore" when its old old friends/work mates, but it seems an effort to go onto my page, click "unfriend", "are you sure?" crap etc, when I haven't done anything, and like you say, FB is all about "adding" people



Just had a look, a couple of friends who've "disappeared" recently were people I added back in mid 2007. And I've never spoken to them since, so that's nearly four years. I'm just wondered if the site is cleaning up dead links or something

 

[LitmusDragon]

If Seinfeld were still on the air this could make a pretty good episode.

"The Defriending"

 

[Tora Ziyal]

I've mysteriously lost a couple friends, too, and just attributed it to the Facebook gremlins. I'm sure FB doesn't do it deliberately. The last one, I didn't even notice was missing until I got a new friend request from someone I'd been friends with for a year.

BTW, it's not as much work as you seem to think to unfriend people. You don't have to go to their pages; you just edit your own friends list.

 

[Ethros]

If Seinfeld were still on the air this could make a pretty good episode.

"The Defriending"

Ha, I've never really seen Seinfeld, but I was thinking along of the same lines for a Curb Your Enthusiasm style awkward confrontation

 

[shivkala]

Some people don't like having lots of work friends on Facebook, as it blurs the line between work and social. Or he could feel like bitching about work and just not want anyone who works there to see it and report him.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Occasionally, there are synchronization issues between Facebook servers and your full friend list may not be available. This would result in your friend list being off, if only slightly. That's the only way Facebook could be responsible, and it's always a temporary situation until all the servers are in sync.

Otherwise, you can pretty much assume a reduce in your friend count is from people defriending you or simply removing their own accounts.

 

[Spot's Meow]

There was one case where my sister had deactivated her account for a couple of months, and when she reactivated it, she was not showing up on anyone's friend list although her page still indicated they were friends. No one could read her messages either. She had to create a new account to solve the problem.

Otherwise, it is probably them deleting you. I do a friend purge every year or so, going through and deleting those I don't have a lot of contact with or who aren't a part of my life anymore. It doesn't necessarily mean I don't like them, but that I just don't have any connection with them anymore. Other people probably do this fairly often as well. Last month I went through and deleted about 15 people off of my list.

I would not question the person about it unless you specifically know that they haven't defriended you. I had one girl from that group of 15 I deleted that sent me messages asking me why I don't like her anymore with a whole bunch of sad faces. I was disturbed that she noticed the deletion at all considering I barely knew her for a year in elementary school and never talked to her on Facebook at all. If you really want that person as a friend still, just send a request and they will either ignore it or realize that you were mistakenly deleted from their list.

 

[Goji]

One of my friends deactivates and then inevitably reactivates his account several times a year. It's funny because I'll see my friends count go down or up one, check and every time it's the same guy. He's been doing it since we were both college freshman. At this point, I think he does it because we're all expecting it.

 

[Holdfast]

I don't Facebook, but if I did, I'd vet it regularly to only include active real-life friends and be pretty rigorous who I added and who I didn't. Then again, that attitude probably explains why I don't Facebook.

Still, if people are realising that blurring the boundaries between public and private is causing annoyance for their lives (eg in business, or in their relationships, or family), then that could explain why you're losing Facebook Friends, Ethros. Either that, or you're terribly insufferable and they're just trying to get away from you.

 

[RoJoHen]

I have de-friended many people on Facebook, and I'm sure a few people have probably de-friended me as well. It happens.

I think Facebook has reached a saturation point. It's no longer something that is rapidly growing in popularity, and people who have been using it for a while are starting to realize they don't need to be friends with anybody they've ever come into contact with. The novelty is wearing off.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I don't Facebook, but if I did...

You'd prefer Dos Equis.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

I defriended some people too. New friends are added as they are met IRL, but if no contact follows, I defriend them. I don't collect "friends" to have high numbers. I add people I really know. I certainly am not interested in "friends" who poke me in FB, but don't say 'hello' on street. So if contact is lost and we don't get in touch any more for whatever reasons, they are out from my list.

 

[Kestra]

"If there's nothing wrong with me... maybe there's something wrong with the universe."

Not in a warp bubble? Then you're probably just being defriended.

 

[Snaploud]

"If there's nothing wrong with me... maybe there's something wrong with the universe."

...still the best line in all of fiction.

 

[Holdfast]

I don't Facebook, but if I did...

You'd prefer Dos Equis.

Thought about it while I was typing, but figured, what the hell, I'll leave it in, no-one else will think of it...

 

[RoJoHen]

"If there's nothing wrong with me... maybe there's something wrong with the universe."

...still the best line in all of fiction.

I could not agree more.

I need to buy TNG on DVD just for that episode.

 

[Trekker4747]

Cartman and his "Mad Friends" campaign is obviously onto you.