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Secretly? Secretly from whom? There is nothing I've come across, ever, that has lead me to believe that Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., ever delete anything, e

Secretly? Secretly from whom? There is nothing I've come across, ever, that has lead me to believe that Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., ever delete anything, ever. Not even to clean up space as some people on this thread are suggesting. Hard drive space is cheap and data is valuable. This isn't a secret, this is a fairly obvious business practice that all the big players, and most competent small players, are engaging in.

oh_sigh 9y ago
Google deletes your data within I think 64 days if you request them to or delete your account. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32046 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32046
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  There's nothing there which clarifies that "delete" isn't a euphemism for "flag it to no longer be displayed to users" like it is everywhere else where companies collect data on users, so you'll excuse my skepticism.
  - lerpa 9y ago
    Exactly and they have the perfect excuse: "Well when talking about deleting we mean we do the exact same thing the file system does to a file, it flags it, but doesn't actually erase it's content. Acting like a filesystem delete operation is what people expect when using that word"
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      That would be somewhat reasonable if it were just an implementation detail. But unfortunately, it's not just an implementation detail. When a filesystem has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, it overwrites the data which was flagged for deletion. But when a web 2.0 company has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, they buy more hard drive space, usually automatically.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        It probably is an implementation detail. I'd bet you 64 days is time is takes for all their backups to be rotated. Not that I think that's legitimate! Implementations can be changed, just like you could write a filesystem that shreds files when they are deleted.
austincheney 9y ago
Clearly there is a big disconnect here. It seems somebody is suggesting there should be a correlation between a user removing content from their account and Facebook destroying some of Facebook property. Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook. Users have no business telling Facebook to destroy Facebook property.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  > Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook. I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Are we to accept that this is how it works simply because Facebook says this is how it works?
  - lerpa 9y ago
    You accept that when you join.
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      Users didn't accept anything just because they checked a checkbox next to a link to an ever-changing jumble of legalese to get past a screen. This isn't agreement, it's manufactured consent.
      - samstave 9y ago
        Extortion
        lerpa 9y ago
        That's like saying having to pay for any product is extortion, just because it's something you want but don't want the consequences of that, in that case paying for it.
      - _acme 9y ago
        Unfortunately no matter how many times you say this or how much you wish it were true, US (at least) courts have disagreed with you by enforcing contracts of adhesion.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>Secretly from whom? The vast majority of users.
alangpierce 9y ago
FWIW, Facebook does say that they will delete all of your data within 90 days of account deletion. I believe that indicates that they've put the engineering effort to do a full audit of data to be deleted, handle missing references across the product, and to fully delete user data from logs and backups. From https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368 https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368 : > When you delete your account, people won't be able to see it on Facebook. It may take up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates or other data stored in backup systems. The case from the article is trickier. My impression is the feature was just implemented with an append-only data model, which is often (maybe usually) a good engineering decision. "Secretly" from the article title feels disingenuous because Facebook never said it was deleted. As an engineer, it's frustrating that I might have to write my software to be more fragile to match the implicit expectations of how a non-technical user thinks software should work. But the frustration on the user's end is also plenty understandable here. Hopefully the gap can be closed a little on both sides by a combination of educating users and being more privacy-conscious in engineering and business decisions.
- samstave 9y ago
  Fucking stupid policy - so they have 90 days to off load your shit to Utah/gov-cloud before they “delete” your data? Who can possibly believe this BS. Imagine you wanted to delete data of your own Sustem - but when you hit rm it takes 90 days to execute - this sentiment PISSES me off. When I say “delete me from your service now” I have a reasonable expectation that you will delete it. C’mon
  - icebraining 9y ago
    It's interesting that you think they need those 90 days to off load your data. As if they hadn't done so before your deletion. By the way, rm does work like that. The file will just be marked as deleted (by removing its entry from the filesystem index), but will remain on your disk for some time afterwards, from some minutes to months. If you want to ensure deletion, you should be using shred.

oh_sigh 9y ago

Google deletes your data within I think 64 days if you request them to or delete your account. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32046 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32046

kerkeslager 9y ago
There's nothing there which clarifies that "delete" isn't a euphemism for "flag it to no longer be displayed to users" like it is everywhere else where companies collect data on users, so you'll excuse my skepticism.
- lerpa 9y ago
  Exactly and they have the perfect excuse: "Well when talking about deleting we mean we do the exact same thing the file system does to a file, it flags it, but doesn't actually erase it's content. Acting like a filesystem delete operation is what people expect when using that word"
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    That would be somewhat reasonable if it were just an implementation detail. But unfortunately, it's not just an implementation detail. When a filesystem has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, it overwrites the data which was flagged for deletion. But when a web 2.0 company has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, they buy more hard drive space, usually automatically.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      It probably is an implementation detail. I'd bet you 64 days is time is takes for all their backups to be rotated. Not that I think that's legitimate! Implementations can be changed, just like you could write a filesystem that shreds files when they are deleted.

austincheney 9y ago

Clearly there is a big disconnect here. It seems somebody is suggesting there should be a correlation between a user removing content from their account and Facebook destroying some of Facebook property. Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook. Users have no business telling Facebook to destroy Facebook property.

kerkeslager 9y ago
> Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook. I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Are we to accept that this is how it works simply because Facebook says this is how it works?
- lerpa 9y ago
  You accept that when you join.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    Users didn't accept anything just because they checked a checkbox next to a link to an ever-changing jumble of legalese to get past a screen. This isn't agreement, it's manufactured consent.
    - samstave 9y ago
      Extortion
      - lerpa 9y ago
        That's like saying having to pay for any product is extortion, just because it's something you want but don't want the consequences of that, in that case paying for it.
    - _acme 9y ago
      Unfortunately no matter how many times you say this or how much you wish it were true, US (at least) courts have disagreed with you by enforcing contracts of adhesion.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

>Secretly from whom? The vast majority of users.

alangpierce 9y ago

FWIW, Facebook does say that they will delete all of your data within 90 days of account deletion. I believe that indicates that they've put the engineering effort to do a full audit of data to be deleted, handle missing references across the product, and to fully delete user data from logs and backups. From https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368 https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368 : > When you delete your account, people won't be able to see it on Facebook. It may take up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates or other data stored in backup systems. The case from the article is trickier. My impression is the feature was just implemented with an append-only data model, which is often (maybe usually) a good engineering decision. "Secretly" from the article title feels disingenuous because Facebook never said it was deleted. As an engineer, it's frustrating that I might have to write my software to be more fragile to match the implicit expectations of how a non-technical user thinks software should work. But the frustration on the user's end is also plenty understandable here. Hopefully the gap can be closed a little on both sides by a combination of educating users and being more privacy-conscious in engineering and business decisions.

samstave 9y ago
Fucking stupid policy - so they have 90 days to off load your shit to Utah/gov-cloud before they “delete” your data? Who can possibly believe this BS. Imagine you wanted to delete data of your own Sustem - but when you hit rm it takes 90 days to execute - this sentiment PISSES me off. When I say “delete me from your service now” I have a reasonable expectation that you will delete it. C’mon
- icebraining 9y ago
  It's interesting that you think they need those 90 days to off load your data. As if they hadn't done so before your deletion. By the way, rm does work like that. The file will just be marked as deleted (by removing its entry from the filesystem index), but will remain on your disk for some time afterwards, from some minutes to months. If you want to ensure deletion, you should be using shred.