Putting aside the plain presumption of this tactic (BethAnne, shown in the fourth image, then my girlfriend and now my wife, most certainly saw more of me after I deactivated my account), what fascinates me about this screen is the same thing that prompted me to leave Facebook in the first place: the system understands “friendship” only in terms of the digital information provided to it. If I am no longer an entity in the system, my “friends” in the system will no longer be connected to me. I’ll no longer be able “send BethAnne a message.”

This is a screenshot of Facebook’s account deactivation screen in 2011 (a friend who recently deactivated his account told me that the screen is essentially the same). At the time, I didn’t have a term for what I encountered. I just thought of it as petty, self-defeating, and not a little desperate. Yet it turns out there is a term, and that this is a thing: confirmshaming.

Anatomy of a Confirmshame

Confirmshaming is a strategy of using visitors’ guilt as leverage for heeding a call to action, usually manifesting as snarky microcopy in exit-intent modals. It's as straightforward a dark pattern as you’re apt to find. Confirmshaming is the web equivalent of the retail store worker that not only doesn’t leave you alone when you say you’re “just browsing,” but says the clothes you’re wearing are ugly. It’s like getting a Dick’s Last Resort waiter when you show up to an Applebee's.

It goes something like this: you’re reading, say, a recipe for lasagna on Food & Wine. Halfway down the page, as you’re making a list of what to buy at the grocery store (maybe you’re in the grocery store reading this), the page is suddenly hidden by a fullscreen modal that looks like this: