When you choose to delete your Facebook account, you now have up to 30 days to reverse your decision before all is lost.
Facebook doesn’t want to let you go. Or at least, it wants to make sure you really (really) want to leave before it actually lets you go. That’s why it has recently extended its deletion grace period from 14 to 30 days. Technically, that means that you have 30 days to decide whether you really wanted to quit Facebook before all your data is permanently removed.
When you go delete your Facebook account, the platform gives you what it calls a grace period. During that period, you can log back into your account and have the option to cancel your request, and reinstate your account.
Officially, Facebook decided to extend the grace period to 30 days because it found that many users were trying to log into accounts they had opted to delete, after the 14-day period. The reality, however, may be a little different.
Facebook is haemorrhaging users and is looking at ways to increase retention. The extra 16 days may not seem like much, but for someone who has chosen to quit the platform, they may just be enough extra time to regret the decision and come back. Retention 101: the more you give time to someone to think about a decision they made, the more likely they are to doubt that decision.
Of course, for users who were not going to look back in the first place, it means waiting an extra two weeks before their data is finally removed from the platform.
We’re living through tough times, right?
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