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This reminds me of the long conversations that I used to have with family members and friends several years ago. With their continuous requests to create my own

This reminds me of the long conversations that I used to have with family members and friends several years ago. With their continuous requests to create my own Facebook profile so I can keep in contact with them and with their activities as well as to share my whereabouts. I always used the same argument to reject these suggestions — "I don't want Facebook to have too much data about me, more than the data that you already provided". I got used to the looks of disbelief, thinking that I was some sort of hermit, an antisocial. I also got tired of answering the frequent "Why don't you have Facebook?" questions. I remember the last time I had this conversation with someone, last year (2017) around August. I found a new love partner, and after the long intimate talks on the phone, they requested the usual "intimate pictures", not necessarily sexual but certainly sexy. While I have no tabus with regards to my sexuality, having an understanding of how the Internet works, I have always refused to send that type of images/videos/audios, and I always tried to be patient with the other person to explain my constant denials. Unfortunately, expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the Internet is most of the time based on hope, and even if they understand, they ultimately don't care because the result doesn't change: you don't get to share something with them and that affects personal interactions. I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing that I believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space. The same way a hard drive works, you don't really delete a picture when you hit the "delete" key, nor even if you clear the "trash" folder, the data is still there, where it was, it just loses the links to the metadata. It is sad how this information becomes news only when bad things happen.

renegadesensei 9y ago
I went through the same issues with friends and loved ones wanting me to create a Facebook account. I resisted for years with the same arguments you made. It had some unfortunate consequences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675681
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Facebook is powerful and insular. Taking it down requires extraordinary organisation. Outrage is helpful in that respect. Agreement is better than disagreement. Would I prefer we had agreement earlier? Yes. Is agreement today better than agreement tomorrow? Absolutely. Now that we have a constituency, the important thing is to mobilise. The past is in the past. Our job, in the present, is to protect the future.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  You think people could organize better than against Trump ? seems unlikely
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > better than against Trump? It is more effective to organise for a cause than against a politician. Presidents are intentionally difficult to remove. The bar for promoting action against Facebook is lower than for prompting action against the President.
  - dec0dedab0de 9y ago
    Trump has many supporters(not me). I don't think any facebook users particularly like facebook, it's just where "everyone" is.
    - stale2002 9y ago
      Exactly this. Who even supports FB? The media? No, they hate them because they took all their ad revenue. Republicans? No, they hate them for the censorship controversy that happened a year or so ago, and because it is full of ultra left wing silicon Valley types. Democrats? No, they hate them for the whole Cambridge analytica, Russian data thing. Facebook has made a lot of enemies, and there really isn't any sort of constituency that SUPPORTS them.
      - pishpash 9y ago
        Still, absent an adequate replacement people will continue to stay there.
chmaynard 9y ago
> Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space. You may be correct, but that doesn't explain why Facebook decided to include so-called deleted files in a download of user data. Clearly these deleted files are still a part of Facebook user profiles and accessible to company data mining software. Facebook has exposed their own duplicity.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
  Maybe the Facebook development processes and tracking of tech debt is just shit. First person: "I'll just flag the content and then it won't show on their timeline!" Second person: "I'll just select all the records that belongs to this account when packaging a backup. All the deleted content should be gone!" But I wouldn't discount your hypothesis.
  - pishpash 9y ago
    When storage is cheap, it's rational to develop the delete flag first and think about cleanup later, which means never. The download content thing seems like a low priority project and the poor intern who probably did it didn't want to figure out how each store keeps the delete flag. At least it's honest. Would you be surprised a dd of your sd card showed your deleted photos?
    - paulie_a 9y ago
      Storage being cheap is irrelevant..when a user requests the data to be deleted. You delete it. Outside of government compliance there is no reason to not comply with that request
      - sgtmas2006 9y ago
        Yes there are, but there are no moral reasons to not comply with it.
        9y ago
cyberpip 9y ago
"I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never meant to be absolute." This is very common, I'm sure. There should be a way to request or a right to request permanent deletion, by law, of one's data on site like Facebook. That said, once something is on the internet, anyone can and will archive it (see https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/). Closing an account, however, should imply permanent deletion. Companies are instead able to operate in a gray area through terms of service agreements that knowingly play on the ignorance of the end user. This common and widespread behavior is a detriment to the user and (arguably) society at-large.
- invisible 9y ago
  GDPR is intended to at least force service providers to give folks the right to be forgotten which compels providers to delete data. While it's own Europe, it's difficult to comply without just making general decision about honoring these requests.
  - strictfp 9y ago
    Actually, GDPR only requires that any links from the data to the user should be destroyed, so that you can no longer figure out who created the data. This means that a lot of data will be left. And realistically I think that a lot of it will remain identifiable, just like anonymized data can be traced back to real users pretty easily if you have enough data points.
    - mattmanser 9y ago
      Pretty certain that videos and photos count as personally identifiable information that have to be deleted.
    - matthewmacleod 9y ago
      I’m not a GDPR lawyer, but I do live with one. My understanding is that an image is by itself PII, regardless of whether or not it has any additional information associated with it. I don’t think there’s a way to retain images without contravening GDPR.
wormseed 9y ago
> I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing that I believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space. This is a dumb conspiracy theory. Facebook has made plenty of public statements that say otherwise, and there's a whole team that works on the system that ensures every trace is erased from disks, logs, cold storage and backups when deleting content.
- zaat 9y ago
  Did you read the OP? How can you say that this is a dumb conspiracy theory?
- boffinism 9y ago
  To be fair though, the article that this comment thread is attached to offers some seemingly direct evidence to support one aspect of this 'dumb' 'conspiracy' 'theory'.
- ohazi 9y ago
  I'm not inclined to believe PR statements like these when there's no way to verify them. Can you support your assertion? The infrequent cases where someone manages to extract or recover supposedly deleted data cast a lot of doubt on your claims. In any case, even if it's not Facebook specifically, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the majority of companies do not actually delete your data.
  - mic47 9y ago
    FB is/was regularly audited by Irish DPC, I think one of the topics was user data deletion. I think that the results were public.
- xab9 9y ago
  First lesson in DB class: do NOT delete. Just flag. I can give you plenty of statements about how I'm Santa Claus though.
- deleted 9y ago
thomastjeffery 9y ago
I think a great way to explain privacy limitations to a non-tech-savvy person is to walk them through using GPG. Once someone understands public and private keys, and webs of trust, there really isn't much left to learn. For someone who understands keypairs, the limitations of Facebook/Twitter/etc., DRM, etc. are obvious. It seems most of us are afraid our non-tech-savvy friends and family won't be able to wrap their heads around security, but not understanding it has gotten us into a pretty bad situation. We should really stress the importance of learning about it.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Once someone understands public and private keys, and webs of trust Nobody in the general public wants this.
  - pmlnr 9y ago
    That doesn't mean they shouldn't.
    - BuuQu9hu 9y ago
      I'm assuming you do everything you should right? So... perfect body? Saving account? great family life? Work is flawless? Life doesn't happen in a vacuum and specialization is a thing. People spend their time on different things. Everyone should do A LOT of things but don't. You can't hold a billion people accountable for that. They thought for whatever reason this was a reasonable trade off. Turns out... maybe not. Instead of being a fucking nerd about it, lets work to help people move to better services. "ummmmm... actually, you should learn about GPG encryption for your files". FFS.
    - sverige 9y ago
      I'm fairly tech savvy (ok, I'm an expert compared to my non-tech family and friends, but not compared to people here). I even had a copy of pgp on my Windows 3.1 machine shortly after Phil Zimmerman created it. I didn't understand it then, and I don't want to understand it now. The better and easier solution has been to avoid putting stuff I don't want anyone to know about me on the internet.
narrator 9y ago
I always tell people to treat Facebook as if every person you ever meet will be able to see it. It's more or less my public persona. Twitter is more anonymous.
- sverige 9y ago
  > Twitter is more anonymous. How did you arrive at that conclusion? I assume Twitter retains everything as well (even "deleted" tweets) and it's all associated with an email address. Or did you mean it in the sense that far fewer people have a Twitter account?
  - dpwm 9y ago
    I used to believe Twitter was better. But once you're above a certain number of active (i.e. publicly retweeting) followers there's a pretty high chance that your tweets will end up in the feed that is used to generate the twitter stream archives: https://archive.org/details/twitterstream?sort=-publicdate https://archive.org/details/twitterstream?sort=-publicdate These are tar files that contain bz2 compressed newline separated twitter events as json. These include deletion events as well, so you can for instance easily estimate the time an auto-deleter is set to. Yes, they're huge archives, but you could still probably process a year of these for particular targets for under $10 on EC2. Whilst I'm impressed with archive team's efforts, I would be surprised if there aren't some commercial twitter stream consumers that absolutely dwarf this. Treat everything you put on twitter as public forever and you won't go too far wrong.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Why would you ever believe it was private? I think Twitter is better because everything is explicitly public, rather than dishonestly pretending it's private.
      - dpwm 9y ago
        Well, I never said I did believe it was private. When I said better, I should really have said better behaved in respect to deletions. Because of the twitter stream APIs it's not. But there does seem to be a strange presumption amongst users that deleted tweets are gone from public view and cannot resurface. There are people who use tweets in all manner of ways that they really weren't designed for, some of which involve deleting them after a few minutes. Many a public figure uses these tweet deletion apps. Some do it for more honest reasons (status count limits -- do they still exist?), others do it to limit their exposure. In the UK at least, there have been cases of libel where either the claimant or the defendant depended upon twitter and in at least one of these the court admitted the claimant had an unfair advantage by forgetting about having a tweet deletion app attached to their account. The case proceeded and the claimant won despite the acknowledged advantage. To some, this may be seen as a clear message that in the eyes of the judiciary it's okay to delete tweets (evidence) as long as it was through an auto deletion app and the individual concerned forgot about its existence. I would not at all be surprised if some lawyers to the rich quietly suggest they install a tweet deletion app as general advice upon instruction.
pdkl95 9y ago
> expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the Internet Then we - the people that do have the necessary technical knowledge - have a duty to teach them what they need to know. This isn't necessarily "how data moves on the internet". Yes, this can be difficult and tedious, but understanding the risk profile for data/networks is increasingly important as networks become involved in everything. > they ultimately don't care Again, it's our duty to teach them why they need to care. This probably shouldn't involve a lecture on networking or data analysis, but instead tailoring an explanation to their personal situation and knowledge.
- leesalminen 9y ago
  > ... instead tailoring an explanation to their personal situation and knowledge. I’ve used this with success several times. Though you generally have to know the person well enough to know their “secrets”.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- simias 9y ago
  I don't think it's because they don't understand or because they don't care, it's just overwhelming. Think about it, to have any basic grasp of understanding regarding the security infrastructure of the internet you need to have a basic understanding of network connections, how HTTPS works, how files are stored on your computer, how files are sent across computers, how your average database works etc... Think about the last time you've tried tinkering with something you're a noob at. Maybe it's deciding that you would try fixing your car engine yourself even though you never were a mechanic. Maybe you decided to make a complicated cake and halfway through you realize that you overestimated your pastry skills. Try to remember the feeling of helplessness you felt at that moment, the "I have no idea what I'm doing and I wish I never had started that in the first place". In my experience that's how 90% of people feel like when trying to do something technical with a computer. A few weeks ago a colleague from HR asked me if I could make a backup of a computer because it contained some critical stuff and she wanted to be able to restore it later if necessary. I say okay, boot up a debian live USB stick I had lying around and start dd'ing the drive to external storage. When I told her the copy was in progress she told me "but I didn't give you the password?". She was amazed when I told her that I didn't need the windows session password to access the data on the disc. I swear I'm not making it up when I say that she asked me if I was a "hacker". That made me realize that there are probably many people out there who think their files are safe as long as their Windows password isn't compromised even if the disc is not encrypted. After all, they can't access the files, so surely nobody else can? If Facebook says my photo is deleted, then surely it must be? Why wouldn't it be? I don't think it's fair to blame these people, we've designed so many strange patterns over the past decades in software that it's difficult to keep track. Maybe having "delete" not actually delete should be considered a dark pattern. Maybe it should even be illegal.
dividuum 9y ago
> I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing that I believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space. No reason to believe. You can read about the storage architecture used to store photos from a post in 2009 here: https://code.facebook.com/posts/685565858139515/needle-in-a-haystack-efficient-storage-of-billions-of-photos/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/685565858139515/needle-in-a-.... Obviously that might and probably has changed since, but at least at some point that was exactly true. Quote: "The delete operation is simple – it marks the needle in the haystack store as deleted by setting a “deleted” bit in the flags field of the needle. However, the associated index record is not modified in any way so an application could end up referencing a deleted needle. A read operation for such a needle will see the “deleted” flag and fail the operation with an appropriate error. The space of a deleted needle is not reclaimed in any way. The only way to reclaim space from deleted needles is to compact the haystack (see below)."
- raverbashing 9y ago
  So, like a filesystem more or less I might just "help" them by uploading more data I guess
  - mistermann 9y ago
    A browser addin to help with this helping might help make the world a better place.
    - halflings 9y ago
      Banning accounts using this add-on (breach of ToS) would be a formality for facebook, if this was to become an issue in the first place. (unlikely that a sufficient number of people will bother doing this)
      - raverbashing 9y ago
        So, it's ok if people die for their growth, but not use a browser extension At this time, what's the loss in being banned?
pennaMan 9y ago
>Unfortunately, expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the Internet Explain how data can be unreadable while it moves. Teach them to use secure communication options. You don't need to be an electric engineer to use a TV remote control.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  But no one has made a TV Remote control version of "encrypted Facebook" or even "encrypted eMail". And heck, there are people who can't use tv remote controls. The only thing that I'd consider "easy" is encrypted chat (signal). The "issue" there is market fragmentation (arguably a good thing).
- madez 9y ago
  What secure communications options specifically?
didibus 9y ago
> It is sad how this information becomes news only when bad things happen. What bad things? I feel that's the part missing from the argument. People have yet to see or hear what are the negative consequences of all that data being kept or even leaked or re-sold. The only one they've started to know about is the potential impact on elections, which is pretty hypothetical and weak to most people I feel. Or maybe identity theft, but that's more related to the Equifax leak. I think its important to rationalise on what are the real consequences of our data no longer being private. Is it really dangerous? What's the worse that could happen? What are the chances of it happening, etc.
craigsmansion 9y ago
Unfortunately there will be no prizes for having been right all along. Even now, as facebook is burning, statements of how one has quit or will be quitting facebook get swept into the pile of incendiary indignation, with encouragement from all sides. But never having used facebook, even at significant personal effort as you indicate, one is relegated from "elitist" before to "smug" now. One day in the future a recruiter will ask why there's nothing about you on the Internet, and you will proudly be able to say: "Because I know the Internet and its dynamics that well" and they will hire you, in awe of your analytical foresight. That's the dream anyway, because you're more likely to be reported for being suspicious. After facebook there will be another facebook, and another, and people will flock to them just the same, and you get to experience being an antisocial hermit all over again. Now I made myself sad. "Social Media: even more depressing when you're not on them!"
- richmarr 9y ago
  > Unfortunately there will be no prizes for having been right all along. Except not having your racy pictures in Facebook's media archive.
- johnchristopher 9y ago
  What about the option where people return to messaging applications for private matters and keep a Tweetbookdin for public persona ?
- stjohnswarts 9y ago
  Facebook is burning. Lol. They suffer a minor setback and they're "burning". Right now there is not much of alternative to facebook, it will be just fine.
drdaeman 9y ago
> I have always refused to send that type of images/videos/audios Isn't it still trivial to self-host stuff? Just send a link to picture (or document or whatever confidential information you want to share) to a password-protected resource on your own server (or even a laptop or desktop machine, if you have globally routeable IP address there). Facebook automation is not that smart to grab the password from the very same conversation, and even if they do - I'm sure they won't do it, knowing you'll catch them in access logs and press charges for unauthorized access. I doubt many would object and insist on sending via a very specific medium (i.e. strictly require pics in a FB Messenger). Some, of course, may find this inconvenient.
- 1over137 9y ago
  "trivial" and "your own server" together? :) Maybe for some code monkey, but not for my mom. :( I really do wish self-hosting were more trivial, it would be a better world.
- speeder 9y ago
  Where I live Internet providers deliberately make self hosting anything extremely hard. Then they charge often 5x or more their normal price to let you host things, but add lots of exceptions, for example all providers put in contract they can immediately cancel your subscription of they detect you hosting anything irc related, doesn't matter of it is a irc server or a irc bot or a server for a open source irc client...
jaclaz 9y ago
>I got used to the looks of disbelief, thinking that I was some sort of hermit, an antisocial. I know that look. >I also got tired of answering the frequent "Why don't you have Facebook?" questions. I solved it by stating flatly "For the same reasons I don't have Twitter.", somehow marking the final period, people still believes I'm a kind of weirdo, but they don't go on asking ...
coldtea 9y ago
>I remember the last time I had this conversation with someone, last year (2017) around August. I found a new love partner, and after the long intimate talks on the phone, they requested the usual "intimate pictures", not necessarily sexual but certainly sexy. Why the fuck are these a thing? Couples don't meet in real life much anymore? And how "usual" are they?
- bittercynic 9y ago
  Anyone have stats on how widespread this is? My spouse and I avoid being in front of cameras naked even when we're pretty sure the camera isn't enabled. Not that anyone else would really want to see us nude, but why take a chance on accidentally recording material that could be embarrassing?

renegadesensei 9y ago

I went through the same issues with friends and loved ones wanting me to create a Facebook account. I resisted for years with the same arguments you made. It had some unfortunate consequences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675681

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Facebook is powerful and insular. Taking it down requires extraordinary organisation. Outrage is helpful in that respect. Agreement is better than disagreement. Would I prefer we had agreement earlier? Yes. Is agreement today better than agreement tomorrow? Absolutely. Now that we have a constituency, the important thing is to mobilise. The past is in the past. Our job, in the present, is to protect the future.

agumonkey 9y ago
You think people could organize better than against Trump ? seems unlikely
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > better than against Trump? It is more effective to organise for a cause than against a politician. Presidents are intentionally difficult to remove. The bar for promoting action against Facebook is lower than for prompting action against the President.
- dec0dedab0de 9y ago
  Trump has many supporters(not me). I don't think any facebook users particularly like facebook, it's just where "everyone" is.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Exactly this. Who even supports FB? The media? No, they hate them because they took all their ad revenue. Republicans? No, they hate them for the censorship controversy that happened a year or so ago, and because it is full of ultra left wing silicon Valley types. Democrats? No, they hate them for the whole Cambridge analytica, Russian data thing. Facebook has made a lot of enemies, and there really isn't any sort of constituency that SUPPORTS them.
    - pishpash 9y ago
      Still, absent an adequate replacement people will continue to stay there.

chmaynard 9y ago

> Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space. You may be correct, but that doesn't explain why Facebook decided to include so-called deleted files in a download of user data. Clearly these deleted files are still a part of Facebook user profiles and accessible to company data mining software. Facebook has exposed their own duplicity.

2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
Maybe the Facebook development processes and tracking of tech debt is just shit. First person: "I'll just flag the content and then it won't show on their timeline!" Second person: "I'll just select all the records that belongs to this account when packaging a backup. All the deleted content should be gone!" But I wouldn't discount your hypothesis.
- pishpash 9y ago
  When storage is cheap, it's rational to develop the delete flag first and think about cleanup later, which means never. The download content thing seems like a low priority project and the poor intern who probably did it didn't want to figure out how each store keeps the delete flag. At least it's honest. Would you be surprised a dd of your sd card showed your deleted photos?
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    Storage being cheap is irrelevant..when a user requests the data to be deleted. You delete it. Outside of government compliance there is no reason to not comply with that request
    - sgtmas2006 9y ago
      Yes there are, but there are no moral reasons to not comply with it.
      - 9y ago

cyberpip 9y ago

"I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never meant to be absolute." This is very common, I'm sure. There should be a way to request or a right to request permanent deletion, by law, of one's data on site like Facebook. That said, once something is on the internet, anyone can and will archive it (see https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/). Closing an account, however, should imply permanent deletion. Companies are instead able to operate in a gray area through terms of service agreements that knowingly play on the ignorance of the end user. This common and widespread behavior is a detriment to the user and (arguably) society at-large.

invisible 9y ago
GDPR is intended to at least force service providers to give folks the right to be forgotten which compels providers to delete data. While it's own Europe, it's difficult to comply without just making general decision about honoring these requests.
- strictfp 9y ago
  Actually, GDPR only requires that any links from the data to the user should be destroyed, so that you can no longer figure out who created the data. This means that a lot of data will be left. And realistically I think that a lot of it will remain identifiable, just like anonymized data can be traced back to real users pretty easily if you have enough data points.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    Pretty certain that videos and photos count as personally identifiable information that have to be deleted.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    I’m not a GDPR lawyer, but I do live with one. My understanding is that an image is by itself PII, regardless of whether or not it has any additional information associated with it. I don’t think there’s a way to retain images without contravening GDPR.

wormseed 9y ago

zaat 9y ago
Did you read the OP? How can you say that this is a dumb conspiracy theory?
boffinism 9y ago
To be fair though, the article that this comment thread is attached to offers some seemingly direct evidence to support one aspect of this 'dumb' 'conspiracy' 'theory'.
ohazi 9y ago
I'm not inclined to believe PR statements like these when there's no way to verify them. Can you support your assertion? The infrequent cases where someone manages to extract or recover supposedly deleted data cast a lot of doubt on your claims. In any case, even if it's not Facebook specifically, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the majority of companies do not actually delete your data.
- mic47 9y ago
  FB is/was regularly audited by Irish DPC, I think one of the topics was user data deletion. I think that the results were public.
xab9 9y ago
First lesson in DB class: do NOT delete. Just flag. I can give you plenty of statements about how I'm Santa Claus though.
deleted 9y ago

thomastjeffery 9y ago

I think a great way to explain privacy limitations to a non-tech-savvy person is to walk them through using GPG. Once someone understands public and private keys, and webs of trust, there really isn't much left to learn. For someone who understands keypairs, the limitations of Facebook/Twitter/etc., DRM, etc. are obvious. It seems most of us are afraid our non-tech-savvy friends and family won't be able to wrap their heads around security, but not understanding it has gotten us into a pretty bad situation. We should really stress the importance of learning about it.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Once someone understands public and private keys, and webs of trust Nobody in the general public wants this.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  That doesn't mean they shouldn't.
  - BuuQu9hu 9y ago
    I'm assuming you do everything you should right? So... perfect body? Saving account? great family life? Work is flawless? Life doesn't happen in a vacuum and specialization is a thing. People spend their time on different things. Everyone should do A LOT of things but don't. You can't hold a billion people accountable for that. They thought for whatever reason this was a reasonable trade off. Turns out... maybe not. Instead of being a fucking nerd about it, lets work to help people move to better services. "ummmmm... actually, you should learn about GPG encryption for your files". FFS.
  - sverige 9y ago
    I'm fairly tech savvy (ok, I'm an expert compared to my non-tech family and friends, but not compared to people here). I even had a copy of pgp on my Windows 3.1 machine shortly after Phil Zimmerman created it. I didn't understand it then, and I don't want to understand it now. The better and easier solution has been to avoid putting stuff I don't want anyone to know about me on the internet.

narrator 9y ago

I always tell people to treat Facebook as if every person you ever meet will be able to see it. It's more or less my public persona. Twitter is more anonymous.

sverige 9y ago
> Twitter is more anonymous. How did you arrive at that conclusion? I assume Twitter retains everything as well (even "deleted" tweets) and it's all associated with an email address. Or did you mean it in the sense that far fewer people have a Twitter account?
- dpwm 9y ago
  I used to believe Twitter was better. But once you're above a certain number of active (i.e. publicly retweeting) followers there's a pretty high chance that your tweets will end up in the feed that is used to generate the twitter stream archives: https://archive.org/details/twitterstream?sort=-publicdate https://archive.org/details/twitterstream?sort=-publicdate These are tar files that contain bz2 compressed newline separated twitter events as json. These include deletion events as well, so you can for instance easily estimate the time an auto-deleter is set to. Yes, they're huge archives, but you could still probably process a year of these for particular targets for under $10 on EC2. Whilst I'm impressed with archive team's efforts, I would be surprised if there aren't some commercial twitter stream consumers that absolutely dwarf this. Treat everything you put on twitter as public forever and you won't go too far wrong.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Why would you ever believe it was private? I think Twitter is better because everything is explicitly public, rather than dishonestly pretending it's private.
    - dpwm 9y ago
      Well, I never said I did believe it was private. When I said better, I should really have said better behaved in respect to deletions. Because of the twitter stream APIs it's not. But there does seem to be a strange presumption amongst users that deleted tweets are gone from public view and cannot resurface. There are people who use tweets in all manner of ways that they really weren't designed for, some of which involve deleting them after a few minutes. Many a public figure uses these tweet deletion apps. Some do it for more honest reasons (status count limits -- do they still exist?), others do it to limit their exposure. In the UK at least, there have been cases of libel where either the claimant or the defendant depended upon twitter and in at least one of these the court admitted the claimant had an unfair advantage by forgetting about having a tweet deletion app attached to their account. The case proceeded and the claimant won despite the acknowledged advantage. To some, this may be seen as a clear message that in the eyes of the judiciary it's okay to delete tweets (evidence) as long as it was through an auto deletion app and the individual concerned forgot about its existence. I would not at all be surprised if some lawyers to the rich quietly suggest they install a tweet deletion app as general advice upon instruction.

pdkl95 9y ago

> expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the Internet Then we - the people that do have the necessary technical knowledge - have a duty to teach them what they need to know. This isn't necessarily "how data moves on the internet". Yes, this can be difficult and tedious, but understanding the risk profile for data/networks is increasingly important as networks become involved in everything. > they ultimately don't care Again, it's our duty to teach them why they need to care. This probably shouldn't involve a lecture on networking or data analysis, but instead tailoring an explanation to their personal situation and knowledge.

leesalminen 9y ago
> ... instead tailoring an explanation to their personal situation and knowledge. I’ve used this with success several times. Though you generally have to know the person well enough to know their “secrets”.
deleted 9y ago
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simias 9y ago
I don't think it's because they don't understand or because they don't care, it's just overwhelming. Think about it, to have any basic grasp of understanding regarding the security infrastructure of the internet you need to have a basic understanding of network connections, how HTTPS works, how files are stored on your computer, how files are sent across computers, how your average database works etc... Think about the last time you've tried tinkering with something you're a noob at. Maybe it's deciding that you would try fixing your car engine yourself even though you never were a mechanic. Maybe you decided to make a complicated cake and halfway through you realize that you overestimated your pastry skills. Try to remember the feeling of helplessness you felt at that moment, the "I have no idea what I'm doing and I wish I never had started that in the first place". In my experience that's how 90% of people feel like when trying to do something technical with a computer. A few weeks ago a colleague from HR asked me if I could make a backup of a computer because it contained some critical stuff and she wanted to be able to restore it later if necessary. I say okay, boot up a debian live USB stick I had lying around and start dd'ing the drive to external storage. When I told her the copy was in progress she told me "but I didn't give you the password?". She was amazed when I told her that I didn't need the windows session password to access the data on the disc. I swear I'm not making it up when I say that she asked me if I was a "hacker". That made me realize that there are probably many people out there who think their files are safe as long as their Windows password isn't compromised even if the disc is not encrypted. After all, they can't access the files, so surely nobody else can? If Facebook says my photo is deleted, then surely it must be? Why wouldn't it be? I don't think it's fair to blame these people, we've designed so many strange patterns over the past decades in software that it's difficult to keep track. Maybe having "delete" not actually delete should be considered a dark pattern. Maybe it should even be illegal.

dividuum 9y ago

> I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing that I believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space. No reason to believe. You can read about the storage architecture used to store photos from a post in 2009 here: https://code.facebook.com/posts/685565858139515/needle-in-a-haystack-efficient-storage-of-billions-of-photos/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/685565858139515/needle-in-a-.... Obviously that might and probably has changed since, but at least at some point that was exactly true. Quote: "The delete operation is simple – it marks the needle in the haystack store as deleted by setting a “deleted” bit in the flags field of the needle. However, the associated index record is not modified in any way so an application could end up referencing a deleted needle. A read operation for such a needle will see the “deleted” flag and fail the operation with an appropriate error. The space of a deleted needle is not reclaimed in any way. The only way to reclaim space from deleted needles is to compact the haystack (see below)."

raverbashing 9y ago
So, like a filesystem more or less I might just "help" them by uploading more data I guess
- mistermann 9y ago
  A browser addin to help with this helping might help make the world a better place.
  - halflings 9y ago
    Banning accounts using this add-on (breach of ToS) would be a formality for facebook, if this was to become an issue in the first place. (unlikely that a sufficient number of people will bother doing this)
    - raverbashing 9y ago
      So, it's ok if people die for their growth, but not use a browser extension At this time, what's the loss in being banned?

pennaMan 9y ago

>Unfortunately, expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the Internet Explain how data can be unreadable while it moves. Teach them to use secure communication options. You don't need to be an electric engineer to use a TV remote control.

ReverseCold 9y ago
But no one has made a TV Remote control version of "encrypted Facebook" or even "encrypted eMail". And heck, there are people who can't use tv remote controls. The only thing that I'd consider "easy" is encrypted chat (signal). The "issue" there is market fragmentation (arguably a good thing).
madez 9y ago
What secure communications options specifically?

didibus 9y ago

> It is sad how this information becomes news only when bad things happen. What bad things? I feel that's the part missing from the argument. People have yet to see or hear what are the negative consequences of all that data being kept or even leaked or re-sold. The only one they've started to know about is the potential impact on elections, which is pretty hypothetical and weak to most people I feel. Or maybe identity theft, but that's more related to the Equifax leak. I think its important to rationalise on what are the real consequences of our data no longer being private. Is it really dangerous? What's the worse that could happen? What are the chances of it happening, etc.

craigsmansion 9y ago

Unfortunately there will be no prizes for having been right all along. Even now, as facebook is burning, statements of how one has quit or will be quitting facebook get swept into the pile of incendiary indignation, with encouragement from all sides. But never having used facebook, even at significant personal effort as you indicate, one is relegated from "elitist" before to "smug" now. One day in the future a recruiter will ask why there's nothing about you on the Internet, and you will proudly be able to say: "Because I know the Internet and its dynamics that well" and they will hire you, in awe of your analytical foresight. That's the dream anyway, because you're more likely to be reported for being suspicious. After facebook there will be another facebook, and another, and people will flock to them just the same, and you get to experience being an antisocial hermit all over again. Now I made myself sad. "Social Media: even more depressing when you're not on them!"

richmarr 9y ago
> Unfortunately there will be no prizes for having been right all along. Except not having your racy pictures in Facebook's media archive.
johnchristopher 9y ago
What about the option where people return to messaging applications for private matters and keep a Tweetbookdin for public persona ?
stjohnswarts 9y ago
Facebook is burning. Lol. They suffer a minor setback and they're "burning". Right now there is not much of alternative to facebook, it will be just fine.

drdaeman 9y ago

> I have always refused to send that type of images/videos/audios Isn't it still trivial to self-host stuff? Just send a link to picture (or document or whatever confidential information you want to share) to a password-protected resource on your own server (or even a laptop or desktop machine, if you have globally routeable IP address there). Facebook automation is not that smart to grab the password from the very same conversation, and even if they do - I'm sure they won't do it, knowing you'll catch them in access logs and press charges for unauthorized access. I doubt many would object and insist on sending via a very specific medium (i.e. strictly require pics in a FB Messenger). Some, of course, may find this inconvenient.

1over137 9y ago
"trivial" and "your own server" together? :) Maybe for some code monkey, but not for my mom. :( I really do wish self-hosting were more trivial, it would be a better world.
speeder 9y ago
Where I live Internet providers deliberately make self hosting anything extremely hard. Then they charge often 5x or more their normal price to let you host things, but add lots of exceptions, for example all providers put in contract they can immediately cancel your subscription of they detect you hosting anything irc related, doesn't matter of it is a irc server or a irc bot or a server for a open source irc client...

jaclaz 9y ago

>I got used to the looks of disbelief, thinking that I was some sort of hermit, an antisocial. I know that look. >I also got tired of answering the frequent "Why don't you have Facebook?" questions. I solved it by stating flatly "For the same reasons I don't have Twitter.", somehow marking the final period, people still believes I'm a kind of weirdo, but they don't go on asking ...

coldtea 9y ago

>I remember the last time I had this conversation with someone, last year (2017) around August. I found a new love partner, and after the long intimate talks on the phone, they requested the usual "intimate pictures", not necessarily sexual but certainly sexy. Why the fuck are these a thing? Couples don't meet in real life much anymore? And how "usual" are they?

bittercynic 9y ago
Anyone have stats on how widespread this is? My spouse and I avoid being in front of cameras naked even when we're pretty sure the camera isn't enabled. Not that anyone else would really want to see us nude, but why take a chance on accidentally recording material that could be embarrassing?