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Need to Do Some Spring Cleaning on Your Facebook Account?


April 22, 2013 | Kyle Chayka

This Saturday, Parsons hosted Rhizome’s Seven on Seven conference — a unique art and technology event that carefully selects seven artists to work with seven technologists for a one-day-only intense session of design and planning. On the following day, each group presented their projects.

One of this year’s best was a collaboration between Mexican-Canadian electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and American entrepreneur/engineer  Harper Reed, who have produced one the most useful Facebook tools I’ve seen in quite some time. Over the course of their twenty-four hour “assignment,” the duo created Friendfracker — a service that deletes up to ten of your Facebook friends, all of which automated and chosen randomly. When asked about why the service wouldn’t allow you to see which friends were deleted, the artist said the following: “You don’t know which friends it deletes. That’s the art.”

Luckily, if your friend count has truly proven to be out of control, the service is cookie-based, meaning that you can use it multiple times as long as you clear your history or use a different browser each time.

The above screenshot is mine. It’s like playing Russian roulette with your social media presence only you don’t know who got shot off until somebody gets pissed. As long as I didn’t delete my mom, it’s cool.