Need to disappear from Facebook or Twitter? Now you can scrub yourself from the Internet with the Web. 2.0 Suicide Machine, a nifty online application that purges your online presence from these all-consuming social networks. Since its Dec. 19 launch, the Suicide Machine has assisted more than 1,000 virtual deaths, severing more than 80,500 friendships on Facebook and removing some 276,000 tweets from Twitter.

Once you hand over your log-in details and click “commit,” the program will delete each bit of info one by one — Twitter tweets, MySpace contacts, Facebook friends, LinkedIn Connections — much like users could do manually. What remains is a brittle cyberskeleton: a profile with no data. Users seem to love it. Testimonials range from joyous farewells (“Good bye, cruel world!”) to good-riddance denouements (“Thank you microblogging. You are, in fact, totally useless”). The Suicide Machine is so popular that thousands are “waiting in line” for their cyberoffing. “Our server is so busy handling the requests,” says co-creator Walter Langelaar.

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But be warned: as in life, resurrection is impossible. After you “commit,” your web doppelgänger croaks for good. When it does, you’ll receive a cybermemorial on the site. RIP, 2.0. We’ll miss you.

What appeals to many of the site’s boosters is the simplicity of the exit. When trying to close an online account, users are often asked to fill out a questionnaire. More importantly, your information and connections aren’t erased; they’re just unpublished. By deleting all your data, the site argues, your private information is also snuffed out on website servers.

Not everyone thinks the proposition is so cool. The uptick in social suicides has put Facebook in a tizzy. In an e-mail to the Suicide Machine’s founders, Facebook demanded “you cease this activity immediately,” citing a violation of users’ privacy. The Suicide Machine’s founders — Langelaar, 32, Gordan Savicic, 30 and Danya Vasiliev, 31 — disagree, arguing users voluntarily hand over their log-in details. Though Facebook blocked the Suicide Machine from accessing the site earlier this month, the Machine’s creators, and suicides are continuing. “Compared to the more than 350 million users [on Facebook], we think deleting a few hundred is not very impressive,” says Langelaar. “But they picked up on it as a potential threat.” LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter have not yet publicly responded.

Langelaar, who is based in Rotterdam, and Vasiliev, who works in Berlin, first met in 2002 during their undergraduate studies. The pair met Savicic while in art school in the Netherlands in 2007. They describe their work as “geek chic.” The Suicide Machine isn’t the first collaborative new media project for the trio, who also operate media lab Moddr and are members of the Rotterdam-based artist collective Worm. Inspiration for the Web 2.0–suicide idea took root when Worm threw a 2008 New Year’s Eve party themed “Web 2.0 Suicide Night.” Recalls Langelaar: “The idea was that everybody would be nice and analog.”

Source: Time.com