Cast below Asynchronous exclusion advantages.
Summary: The user has an advantage in the "time of repentance" when deciding to keep his data and in matters of security violation (another person may have requested the deletion). The company has an advantage in taking action to maintain the customer and to use less costly methods of information deletion. The community involved has an advantage in maintaining plural discussions by reducing user avoidance when it comes to heated discussions.
Advantages for the user when there is "time to repent" in deleting an account:
Avoid data loss. The user has time to export data that they find important. Google, for example, usually gives the user the option to export their data during the deactivation time and constantly reminds them of it. Of course, there is also a "psychological factor" that can prevent customer loss.
Ensure that it was the user who requested the account deletion. The deletion process tends to notify the user by email or other associated contact, so that if your account has been compromised and the deletion requested by third parties, he has the opportunity to cancel the process before losing the account.
There are also advantages for the service provider and, in the case of "larger" services like Google and Facebook, there are very likely technical issues associated with the cost of data deletion.
A bargaining advantage is the "psychological factor" mentioned above. Constant notifications, requests for "don’t go away!" and promotional actions (when there is commercial relationship involved) can make the user change his or her mind, avoiding the loss of the customer.
In times of big data and storage of every type of event and metadata, each user generates absurd amounts of information that is retained in various storage systems, data centers different systems around the world etc. Systems of great complexity and chaining of services associated to the same account may represent a higher cost in the use of resources when deleting this information: Google (again) usually inform that the data may take time to be deleted, and this is most likely due to the fact that it is less expensive to have processes batch data deletion journals grouping their removal into a large monthly process, for example.
This response in the UX also deals with the legal requirements associated with the exclusion of customer data. An e-commerce site needs to keep sufficient accounting information for tax returns and possible revenue audits (in the case of the US, but certainly in Brazil as well), and should retain data from its paying sources. At the same time, in Europe it is right for users to have all their data deleted. Thus, data deletion may require extra processing to replace non-tax information by again justifying its execution in batch.
There are also, as mentioned in the question, advantages for the community. Online interaction is not always friction-free, and a user may decide to delete their account in the heat of the moment, such as a Rage quit, and regret it later. One can even argue that such passion is harmful to a community, but there is also the counter-argument that the plurality of genius and behavior contributes to the diversity of interaction.
Services/companies that rely on healthy interaction between users, such as Stack Overflow, Github etc. depend on this tenuous balance in human relations and may choose to intervene - in the form of "time to repent", for example - at the hottest times in order to ensure the smooth running of the community.
As for the disadvantages of using "time of repentance", I believe they are associated with the user’s perception that his intention is not being honored by the service. However, except for reduced data volume, such as small e-commerce accounts in smaller companies, it is difficult to find account deletion processes that are online, especially when data is archived for backup long-standing tape devices, for example. Thus, when saying that the account has been closed and that the data has been deleted immediately, but actually scheduling an deletion during night or asynchronous process between data centers, the company would be lying to the user.
My personal opinion on the subject is that when requesting account cancellation, provided that my data are effectively excluded within a reasonable time (I have nothing against waiting 30 days), the exclusion process is satisfactory. It is painful to think, however, about the possibility of the company lying about the exclusion, given the value and commercial advantage that the possession of personal information represents today more than ever. Metadata that allows inferring consumer habits, financial information, billing data... it’s easy to imagine a company keeping such data without the user’s permission to use it in future in business partnerships.
@DVD Understand, actually the tag
uxturns out to be based more on opinions anyway, seeing some of the questions about her. I don’t know if I should edit the question but recently something happened here at Stackoverflow, where a user wanted to delete his answer and delete his account and ended up having his account temporarily suspended foracalmar os ânimos. I believe someone might come up with a good answer, but if you decide to close the question I’ll understand.– Raizant
@DVD It would be based on opinions if he asked which is best without specifying what he considers best. Since the question is what are the advantages of one over the other, you can list the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and some criteria of how to choose according to the specific situation, but without giving a verdict. So I think that question is close to the line, but still on the inside.
– Victor Stafusa
Tah blz........
– Sam