Yes. I've talked with some in the social media industry about addressing GDPR. What it means is a massive shift in the way data is handled. What's the differen

Yes. I've talked with some in the social media industry about addressing GDPR. What it means is a massive shift in the way data is handled. What's the difference? Well, it's helpful to have some context on how data is used in a place like FB. Data originates (for the most part) with the user. It get's dropped in one of the many operational data sources that back the service. From there, it's mostly waiting to be used by someone for some reason, which might be a ML project or something else. So, then you will want to move the data. You'll make some sort of pipeline from the source to where you want to work, such as ETL the data you want out or set up some sort of messaging system to handle things in an online way. Maybe now that you have the data, you'll share it with other people working on the project. The data might be distributed (best case) through an environment meant to work with the data (e.g., Spark/HDFS/Hadoop) or might just be sent piecemeal as CSVs. Once the project is done, the data might just be left in place. Who knows where those CSV's go? One of the big requirements of GDPR is deleting an individual's data EVERYWHERE. And while the above is a sort of simplified view of user of data in a logical manner, I can assure you someone out there somewhere is doing something that doesn't make sense. In light of that, getting rid of a person's data everywhere is a HUGE architectural/infrastructural/process problem for a platform like FB.