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It seems a bit naive to think that a service provider would scrub their systems on individual requests. It's not practical to perform a delete in some environm

It seems a bit naive to think that a service provider would scrub their systems on individual requests. It's not practical to perform a delete in some environments. It's certainly not practical to go through backup files and delete references in others. Everybody goes through a data recovery scenario at some point. What you should expect is best effort. Nobody is going to re-train their neural networks that referenced your data. It's doubtful that any provider would delete what they have gleaned about you simply because you wanted your account removed. Then there's the practicality of things. If you delete your account here on HN, would you expect all conversations that you participated in to be removed? All references to your comments? Or all comments that you made removed? Do you expect them to push that change out to google? Do you expect your references in access logs removed? There's always a trail. Facebook isn't uniquely evil. They have the same problems as everyone else, and they have those problems at an incredible scale. People think about these things as if they are files or entries in a simple SQL database that can simply be removed. They may use databases, but to think that all of your data exists in a singular database or that all of your data only exists in databases is simply not extrapolating what you know about technology to their environment. If google were to remove a website from their index, how long would it take for all of their environments to no longer have a record of it? And would that actually be desirable? There aren't faceless drones working on these kinds of problems. There are very smart people and most of them have a conscience and care about end users. I don't think you would find that any large group of people at facebook, google, amazon, microsoft, or any of the big companies are completely apathetic to end user concerns. I'm sure plenty are far too busy to address individuals directly, but they certainly are not apathetic. <sorry... I seem to have rambled off on a tangent>

frik 9y ago
The single source of truths, all the core Facebook users data (except messages) is stored in MySQL cluster. The issue you describe is that the same data is also cached in Memcached and by other means. But deleting is entirely possible, though it's against their business model, so they make real deleting as hard to find and do as possible, and scare people away with info like "you cannot register again". Training of neural networks is probably a gray area, and a potential issue for many companies. Example: Think of the recorded audio messages from Siri/GoogleNow/Cortana that gets processes and potentially stored and not deleted thereafter on their (and third parties like Nuance) servers. If one deletes an account, one would assume it also and especially also deletes all private data like messages, voice and video recording.
- jankins 9y ago
  Aaa
- virgilp 9y ago
  > make real deleting as hard to find and do as possible, and scare people away with info like "you cannot register again". They do that? And is that legal? How will facebook prevent me from registering again, if they deleted all PII that they had on me? That'd be clear proof that they didn't respect my GDPR request for deletion, and I could sue them easily.
asdfgadsfgasfdg 9y ago
Yeah I think that these arguments will just lead to a company getting a fine. My data is mine not yours. If I withdraw my consent to you having it just delete it. If you can't do this then don't collect my data in the first place.
justhw 9y ago
> Then there's the practicality of things. If you delete your account here on HN, would you expect all conversations that you participated in to be removed? All references to your comments? Or all comments that you made removed? There's been few debates here about the definition of to 'delete' which I won't get into. However, as a user, it rubs me wrong when companies equate simple username disassociation with deletion. It's not a user's place to wonder about the practicality of deletion at scale. A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts.
- yorwba 9y ago
  > A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts. Do they though? Maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but I thought the GDPR only applies to personally identifying information, not all data ever generated by a user. So by disassociating the user name and the post, the post has suddenly ceased to be personally identifying information and no longer needs to be deleted.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    That's difficult, though. What if the contents of a post provide identifying details of the owner of the account?
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      IMHO that should be treated in the same manner that if the contents of my post provide identifying details of the to-be-deleted person.
- Steeeve 9y ago
  > A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts. What major sites behave in a way that you find acceptable?
jazoom 9y ago
Not a tangent. Those were all good, relevant points.

frik 9y ago

The single source of truths, all the core Facebook users data (except messages) is stored in MySQL cluster. The issue you describe is that the same data is also cached in Memcached and by other means. But deleting is entirely possible, though it's against their business model, so they make real deleting as hard to find and do as possible, and scare people away with info like "you cannot register again". Training of neural networks is probably a gray area, and a potential issue for many companies. Example: Think of the recorded audio messages from Siri/GoogleNow/Cortana that gets processes and potentially stored and not deleted thereafter on their (and third parties like Nuance) servers. If one deletes an account, one would assume it also and especially also deletes all private data like messages, voice and video recording.

jankins 9y ago
Aaa
virgilp 9y ago
> make real deleting as hard to find and do as possible, and scare people away with info like "you cannot register again". They do that? And is that legal? How will facebook prevent me from registering again, if they deleted all PII that they had on me? That'd be clear proof that they didn't respect my GDPR request for deletion, and I could sue them easily.

asdfgadsfgasfdg 9y ago

Yeah I think that these arguments will just lead to a company getting a fine. My data is mine not yours. If I withdraw my consent to you having it just delete it. If you can't do this then don't collect my data in the first place.

justhw 9y ago

> Then there's the practicality of things. If you delete your account here on HN, would you expect all conversations that you participated in to be removed? All references to your comments? Or all comments that you made removed? There's been few debates here about the definition of to 'delete' which I won't get into. However, as a user, it rubs me wrong when companies equate simple username disassociation with deletion. It's not a user's place to wonder about the practicality of deletion at scale. A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts.

yorwba 9y ago
> A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts. Do they though? Maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but I thought the GDPR only applies to personally identifying information, not all data ever generated by a user. So by disassociating the user name and the post, the post has suddenly ceased to be personally identifying information and no longer needs to be deleted.
- kelnos 9y ago
  That's difficult, though. What if the contents of a post provide identifying details of the owner of the account?
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    IMHO that should be treated in the same manner that if the contents of my post provide identifying details of the to-be-deleted person.
Steeeve 9y ago
> A user has the right to have removed all content they've produced regardless of whether it's linked with other posts. What major sites behave in a way that you find acceptable?

jazoom 9y ago

Not a tangent. Those were all good, relevant points.