ERIN BALL
The Nexus

VICTORIA (CUP) — Virtual suicide, the act of erasing the online profile that an Internet user has created, is becoming more common — thanks in part to one site that has raised Facebook’s ire.

That site is seppukoo.com, which was created by an art group out of Italy, Les Liens Invisibles. The name of the site refers to seppuku, a form of Japanese ritual suicide reserved for samurai.

While other sites help users delete personal information from many different social networking websites, seppukoo.com specializes in committing virtual suicide specifically on Facebook.

Once a user gives the site their Facebook username and password, seppukoo.com will log in, send online friends a message with last words, and deactivate the account. They also create a memorial page for the virtual deceased that will show up when friends try to visit the deactivated home page.

The site cannot actually delete a profile on Facebook and users can simply log back in to reactivate their account. Fully deleting one’s profile is possible, but takes much persistence on behalf of the original user.

In December of 2009, Facebook threatened legal action against seppukoo.com in order to stop them from offering their services to Facebook users. Facebook has also blocked users from typing the words “seppukoo.com” into their status updates.

Some Internet users have used seppukoo.com and other sites such as suicidemachine.org to commit virtual suicide as a form of social activism. Some users believe that the distracting nature of the Internet is preventing them from having an authentic life.

Dave Sawchuk, a former Facebook user and Victoria, B.C. resident, is one of those people. He has taken it upon himself to delete his Facebook account.

“I deleted Facebook because I found myself wasting my time on it,” says Sawchuck. “I also didn’t feel it was an accurate depiction my life.”

Other users are concerned about corporations having access to personal information posted online. If users choose to share their information with everyone on Facebook, it can be considered public information and third-party businesses can use it for targeted advertising.

“Many feel the world is sliding towards techno-fascism, and sites like Facebook only escalate people’s reluctance and genuine fear of social media and pervasive computing,” says Irwin Oostindie, the executive director of W2 Culture and Media House, an independent social media centre in Vancouver.

Debbie Gascoyne, an English instructor at Camosun College in Victoria, is a social media user and proponent. She says the use of virtual suicide websites is ironic.

“People are using social media to illustrate their disapproval of social media,” says Gascoyne. “It would be equally effective to simply stop posting updates, or to erase their account. Posting an RIP (message) is, in a way, just another update, isn’t it?”

Suicidemachine.org does the same thing as seppukoo.com, but offers its services for a wider variety of social-media networks, including Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn. The site allows you to watch your virtual suicide as it happens. As with seppukoo.com, it is unable to permanently delete Facebook accounts.

As Sawchuk discovered, it’s difficult to permanently delete a Facebook account, which is one of the reasons why seppukoo.com exists in the first place.

“When I first tried to delete my page, I was told Facebook doesn’t delete pages, they just deactivate them,” says Sawchuk. “Eventually, I found a blog, or a how-to, on how to delete my page. Even when I did everything they asked, I still had to wait two weeks until it was officially deleted.”

image: Flickr