11 ms·

Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

194 points by uptown 9y ago

h4l0 9y ago
This story feels like exaggerated due to weak link between Zuckerberg's messages and the new feature. They also add that Secret Chats in Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram already support removing an already sent message. Facebook decided to also offer this feature for regular Messenger chats. I guess any headline carrying Facebook, Zuckerberg and privacy concerns can make it to top these days. Modern online journalism is a whole another subject.
- 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
  But.. wasn't this product announcement only made after journalists started asking about the Zuckerberg messages? The original story WASN'T exaggerated, facebook are just trying to play it down by making it sound like anyone can do what zuck did.
  - tzakrajs 9y ago
    Zuck was just beta testing! He's hard at work testing new features for your privacy!
    - dpflan 9y ago
      When will he improve "Poke"? :)
      - owlsaway 9y ago
        Hey, we got Wink, Hug, High Five, and Hello, in addition to Poke, didn't we? ;)
      - Razengan 9y ago
        POKE 53280, PEEK(53281)
CryoLogic 9y ago
Maybe Zuck can prevent some future scandals with this new feature. Unfortunately we all know they aren't actually deleting the messages, just hiding it. You can probably still buy the data. { message: `They "trust me", dumb fucks`, isDeleted: true } In the UI: "Your message was successfully deleted!"
- nafey 9y ago
  Does your message data actually get sold to third parties?
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
    Probably not the message data itself, as you would still have to parse it to gain insights. But the insights mined from it, definitely.
  - CryoLogic 9y ago
    There was a class action lawsuit in 2014 in regards to Facebook selling private chat data. I am not sure what came of it. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
  - gressquel 9y ago
    I don't really know, but as facebook usage declines they will become more and more desperate to make up for the loss of revenue. One of these days when most people have moved over to another platform there will news in the media "Facebook sold users private chatlogs".
- mkirklions 9y ago
  >isDeleted: true This is entirely why I dont delete anything now. I feel like there are some blackmail companies that are web crawling looking for deleted comments and posts. Or if they dont exist today, they will in a few decades.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
feelin_googley 9y ago
What permission does the user give FB in terms of how FB can use the messages? The message might "disappear" after a few seconds, but at that point FB may have already extracted the information they want from it, information they will use to further their business. Assuming users want some sort of privacy, from whom is it that they want their messages to remain "private"? Will there ever be options in FB "privacy settings" such as: [ ] Do not share with Facebook [ ] Do not share with advertisers, political campaigns, etc. Absurdity aside, the mere feasibilty of this is itself debatable. Do users want their messages to remain private from companies like Facebook? How about from FB's clients, e.g., advertisers, political campaigns, hospitals, etc.? How about from the rest of the general public? We now know as confirmed by FB that this user data has been shared for years. Perhaps FB can argue this was "informed consent". However users can change their minds in light of more information. They should be able to revoke that consent going forward. Will all that "leaked" user data FB has intentionally shared self-destruct after some period of time? Unfortunately, no. It seems to me that, in the main, the parties that have the greatest incentive to monitor users messaging are in fact companies like FB and their clients. They have a financial incentive that is in the aggregate far greater than any individual (petty criminal, etc.). Collecting user data has become their business. "It is literally just what we do." Period. Finally, thanks to the explosive growth of single websites into vast monopolies like Facebook that extend their reach into nearly every corner of the internet, they, the companies behind these websites, are in the best position to do it. It should be self-evident but maybe needs to be restated: These companies cannot protect the user from the company itself. The amount of trust required of the user depending on these websites is simply mind-blowing (from the perspective of someone who has lived in times when no such trust was necessary). Thats only an opinion. I respect any disagreement and welcome karma subtraction as a means to express it.
- matuszeg 9y ago
  Your statement on trust cannot be restated enough. My additional concern is that, I do not use Facebook. I deleted my account like 10 years. Yet they still retain data on me, not only without my consent. They have the opposite of my consent. I explicitly told them to delete everything they had on me and I am opting out of their service. Yet articles like this pop up time and time again[1]. There is talks about them scanning every picture on facebook for faces and building profiles of everyone, including non-users. How am I, a person who has no Facebook and does not want anything to do with them supposed to stop them from monitoring and tracking me. Imagine if in high school you found out some guy in your class was keeping records of the structure of your face, or the websites you visit and you confront them to stop and all they say is other students have allowed me to do this so I keep everyone's records to make it easier for me to track the people who gave me permission. I assume everyone would not be comfortable with this, especially if they then go to sell that data to the students running for class president so they can manipulate your friends to harass you to vote for their candidate. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/19/facebooks-tracking-of-non-users-ruled-illegal-again/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/19/facebooks-tracking-of-non-...
pasbesoin 9y ago
Ha, this just confirms what I thought to myself but decided not to comment on, reading some other recent Facebook-disaster post here. Mark has a different Facebook. I bet he doesn't see ads, unless he wants to. And, come to think of it, when he or other blessed entities delete something, it's really gone. Come to think of it, I wonder whether their data gets scooped up by the various monitoring and collection tools that are doubtless built in to the product and its administrative interface. Are they really dogfooding their own product, at this point?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  > but decided not to comment on Ahh, you were so close too!
  - pasbesoin 9y ago
    LOL. Touche. I'd better hit the delete link here before it disappears.
- matuszeg 9y ago
  I would assume he has an admin type of account on Facebook, but does that even matter tho. He and many other employees have direct access to their databases and code. They can do whatever they want and there do not seem to be any checks in place to prevent crime/abuse. If some engineer at Facebook wants to log into the account of someone they have a crush on, search for nudes or something else nefarious, I have yet to learn of any systems in place to prevent that from happening besides Facebook telling us to trust them. They used to have a master password to log into any account[1]. They say they replaced this with a special tool you need "permission" to use. Quote from the article "Finally, while the interviewee says the ‘master password’ has been deprecated, employees can still access your profile through a special tool, but they need to provide a reason for why they’re doing it. If they get audited down the line and fail to provide an explanation, they can be fired" That sounds like a system where you trust everyone and audit later to verify nothing bad happened. Imo these systems are put in place to hide abuse not reveal it because they are reactionary instead of preventative. That entire system of checking employees from abusing data, relies of everyone trusting the people in charge at Facebook to do the right thing, insert "dumb fucks" Zuckerberg quote here[2]. Imo it is a matter of time before we find out about wide scale massive data abuse from Facebook employees. Either an insider feeding out data to others or someone on the inside listening to hedge fund managers private conversations to insider trade off of. I am just generally tired of everyone trusting everyone all the time. We have to have rules and systems in place to eliminate the need for trust. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/rumpus-facebook-privacy/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/rumpus-facebook-privacy/ [2] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes
varenc 9y ago
Really confused about what this story is about since I have no problem deleting years-old messages from Facebook messenger. (Whether that really removes the bytes or flips a delete flag who can say) Edit: as others have pointed out, this only deletes things locally for you which makes this a pretty deceptive feature... https://m.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/242107552657620 https://m.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/242107552657620
- adventured 9y ago
  Someone can correct me if I'm wrong: I believe that still leaves a copy of the message with the receiving party. That's the issue of contention here. The messages were also deleted for the receiver of Zuckerberg's messages.
- aarongolliver 9y ago
  That only deletes it from your account. The person who received it still has their copy.
- ladberg 9y ago
  If you delete those then the recipient can still see them (it just deletes them for you). Zuckerberg's messages (and the new "unsend" feature) delete the messages for everyone, which is different.
  - varenc 9y ago
    Wow thanks for clarifying. That is absolutely deceptive. The UI never mentions that, but I found some support docs that do. I imagine the majority of people deleting messages aren't aware of this...
    - jdtang13 9y ago
      I think it's a little funny but I wouldn't call it deceptive. If you delete your local copy of a text message, that doesn't remove it from the other person's phone. Same thing with messages on AIM and IRC. So un-sending seems to be the far less obvious feature.
andy_ppp 9y ago
Does Hacker News really delete your comment if you delete it?
- cblock811 9y ago
  I trust that they do, which is more than can be said for Facebook at this point.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    I highly doubt that they do.
    - loceng 9y ago
      It's moot if there's anyone or service doing backups of HN, whether for archiving purposes or other. I know Reddit has a few services doing that for threads -- which recently lead to evidence on /r/legaladvice that can be used against an employer as both the employer and employee posted separately, the manager essentially stating that they wanted to fire the employee in retaliation and for not participating (regardless of their cultural/religious practices, and having been told so prior to continued violations). Unfortunately we don't have government organizations that help with moderating discussion (like a therapist would), such as a parent would help children learn how to communicate with others in difficult situations, to deal with emotions, etc; and if bad behaviour, giving someone time-out until they can "play nice" again. We have to of course make an environment good enough, rewarding enough to be part of, that it's an incentive for everyone to want to play nice. Perhaps we need to come up with a new system (separate from legal system, or part of justice-education system) for dealing with situations that teach compassion when compassion/understanding is missing, e.g. should bullying a crime, or who should we leave that up to - is it even required to bring all participants related to bullying together, parents of the perpetrator and the victim, and create a healing circle to uncover the deeper underlying issues? The whole point would be to rally support, so we can build stronger, deep community - and society could, like with criminal law, have fines or other limitations created if people decide to opt-out of this system. We really need to become more comfortable with accountability, that our actions have consequences - though we also must support a practice of learning, mistakes happen during learning, etc; there's pretending to have learned, and genuine change/evolution in a person's thinking and behaviour, difficult to perhaps tell in some cases online.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
propman 9y ago
This is awesome! 17 year old me shit talking with friends shouldn't be used against me if I were to obtain a position of power and be blackmailed by that. Also, any message without context could be construed as sexist, racist, privalidged, ablist or whatever. Really positive development from this entire mess of a scandal.
- Sir_Substance 9y ago
  Oh sweet summer child. Those messages aren't going to be deleted, they're just going to be hidden. They could be un-unsent as easily as they could be unsent. If you don't trust your friends not to blackmail you, you can't trust them not to just save every message themselves at the time you send it anyway. Even so, "unsending" messages is a meaningless gesture to security because you have no way to verify that anything has been destroyed. Facebooks track record clearly demonstrates that in the absence of evidence, they definitely aren't destroying the data. This feature will be marginally useful for correcting typos, and that's about it.
  - loceng 9y ago
    I doubt the worry was a friend attempting to blackmail.
- pound 9y ago
  /me starts taking screenshots of conversations with others.. ;)
- tobtoh 9y ago
  Also means people can be harassed and the offender can delete the message after they know the person has seen the message (via the read receipt).
  - codedokode 9y ago
    Deleting the message will look like admitting a thing done wrong.
MBCook 9y ago
A.K.A. Zuckerberg did something that was supposed to be impossible and to explain how he did it they have now announced a new feature they just thought up as cover.
- curiousgal 9y ago
  Reddit should have done the same. /s https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
  - deft 9y ago
    Came here to say this :). Abuse of admin privileges on social networks has always been a problem. Only recently are the networks worth billions of dollars though.
    - creaghpatr 9y ago
      It raises the question...what other liberties did Zuckerberg take on facebook? The reddit thing was petty, but didn't really do any material damage. Uber's God View was more troubling...showing how you could track politicians/celebs usage of the platform. But facebook...this admission opens the door to speculation that Zuckerberg could have theoretically taken ad hoc 'God Mode' actions against users of his personal interest...read their messages, view their activity logs, etc. Only Facebook knows, for now.
      - scarmig 9y ago
        Why wouldn't you trust him?
        sverige 9y ago
        Exactly. Also, they're a private company. They can do whatever they like with their data per the ToS. Why is this even a concern?
nashashmi 9y ago
Note: They arent talking about DELETING MESSAGES, but UNSENDING messages. Rant: FB is a data hog. But shares data with ad companies. To entice them into advertising. Otherwise their ad platform sucks.
jakebasile 9y ago
Please excuse some meta commentary here. Is HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I cannot believe the amount of posts about Facebook, condemning Facebook, blaming Facebook, assuming the worst motives of Facebook, and picking apart every word said by Facebook executives. In every post's comments there are the same tired "you are the product", "I deleted Facebook and if you don't you're an idiot", "dumb fucks trust me" comments. It's getting so that I don't even want to refresh here, since at any given time a chunk of the headlines are taken up with the same old shit hating on Facebook. I roll my eyes and move on usually, but it's getting to me to see a forum I enjoy devolve into a negative hate train of spite. I don't work for Facebook, they thought I wasn't smart enough to work there. I have no financial interest in Facebook. I do use Facebook moderately often. I'm mostly just tired of seeing the negativity and hate.
- toufka 9y ago
  Because the underlying issue is right now one of the largest and most intrinsically important and unresolved issues for not just our industry, but for our society. You're effectively on the front-line of a social discourse that will eventually settle to become part of our social fabric. And on that front line there's a lot of thrashing about - but that's a good thing. It's worth our time and effort to bring up the issues, hash them out, run through ideas, gather evidence , etc.
- praneshp 9y ago
  > s HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I I've been here 3-4 years, and Fb (and Uber) have a special level of hatred here. If my first job had been at facebook I'd have stayed off here because I'd have found the toxicity impossible to take. On the other hand, people fall over themselves to defend Elon Musk for doing pretty much the same thing Uber did: Kill a person due to misleading marketing, enforced by a statement with more misleading stuff.
- AlexandrB 9y ago
  I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result. I also think it deserves every bit of it and many of its social media peers do too (LinkedIn is basically Facebook with even more "dark patterns"). Regarding some of the specific comments you're seeing repeated - yes "you are the product" gets trotted out a lot - but it's basically correct, isn't it? You haven't offered any counter-argument here. Pointing out that Facebook's material incentives are absolutely not aligned with those of their users is always going to be relevant when discussing how Facebook handles user data. Facebook could minimize the data they gather instead of maximizing it, they could give users fine-grained control over what data "partners" get to use/target, they could make the defaults for many options private. There's no incentive to do any of this though - so in many cases they do the opposite [1]. [1] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
anigbrowl 9y ago
Seeing as how people already record sketchy conversations by screenshotting them this will only impress the naive. Screenshots aren't absolutely perfect as evidence, but since error level analysis can show up many kinds of graphic manipulation, they're pretty good on a practical level.
- matte_black 9y ago
  What’s naive is to even believe a screenshot. They can easily be faked. In fact I think there’s entire apps just for this purpose. You would never know the difference. You can also just straight up edit HTML and screenshot that. Screenshots as evidence, how laughable.
  - abrahamepton 9y ago
    You completely missed the entire second half of the last sentence, which refutes your point.
master_ant 9y ago
"And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages. We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not." This says a lot about the current situation. What else don't we know?
Medox 9y ago
This was discussed and patented already in June 2016. Here is an article, including a link to the patent: http://techpp.com/2016/06/24/facebook-messenger-unsend-message/ http://techpp.com/2016/06/24/facebook-messenger-unsend-messa... . Hardly something they have started to put together after the scandal, but maybe the worst timing or idea to go back to now...
ppbutt 9y ago
Zuck is a dumb fuck
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We eventually ban accounts that do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sAbakumoff 9y ago
Questions I have: what's the number of Mark's messages that have been deleted before upcoming Congressional hearings? Is it greater or less than those 33K emails that Hillary Clinton has deleted after getting the subpoena? Does Mark understand that after uncovering this story his career is most likely ruined forever?

194 points by uptown 9y ago

h4l0 9y ago

This story feels like exaggerated due to weak link between Zuckerberg's messages and the new feature. They also add that Secret Chats in Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram already support removing an already sent message. Facebook decided to also offer this feature for regular Messenger chats. I guess any headline carrying Facebook, Zuckerberg and privacy concerns can make it to top these days. Modern online journalism is a whole another subject.

9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
But.. wasn't this product announcement only made after journalists started asking about the Zuckerberg messages? The original story WASN'T exaggerated, facebook are just trying to play it down by making it sound like anyone can do what zuck did.
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  Zuck was just beta testing! He's hard at work testing new features for your privacy!
  - dpflan 9y ago
    When will he improve "Poke"? :)
    - owlsaway 9y ago
      Hey, we got Wink, Hug, High Five, and Hello, in addition to Poke, didn't we? ;)
    - Razengan 9y ago
      POKE 53280, PEEK(53281)

CryoLogic 9y ago

Maybe Zuck can prevent some future scandals with this new feature. Unfortunately we all know they aren't actually deleting the messages, just hiding it. You can probably still buy the data. { message: `They "trust me", dumb fucks`, isDeleted: true } In the UI: "Your message was successfully deleted!"

nafey 9y ago
Does your message data actually get sold to third parties?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  Probably not the message data itself, as you would still have to parse it to gain insights. But the insights mined from it, definitely.
- CryoLogic 9y ago
  There was a class action lawsuit in 2014 in regards to Facebook selling private chat data. I am not sure what came of it. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
- gressquel 9y ago
  I don't really know, but as facebook usage declines they will become more and more desperate to make up for the loss of revenue. One of these days when most people have moved over to another platform there will news in the media "Facebook sold users private chatlogs".
mkirklions 9y ago
>isDeleted: true This is entirely why I dont delete anything now. I feel like there are some blackmail companies that are web crawling looking for deleted comments and posts. Or if they dont exist today, they will in a few decades.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

feelin_googley 9y ago

What permission does the user give FB in terms of how FB can use the messages? The message might "disappear" after a few seconds, but at that point FB may have already extracted the information they want from it, information they will use to further their business. Assuming users want some sort of privacy, from whom is it that they want their messages to remain "private"? Will there ever be options in FB "privacy settings" such as: [ ] Do not share with Facebook [ ] Do not share with advertisers, political campaigns, etc. Absurdity aside, the mere feasibilty of this is itself debatable. Do users want their messages to remain private from companies like Facebook? How about from FB's clients, e.g., advertisers, political campaigns, hospitals, etc.? How about from the rest of the general public? We now know as confirmed by FB that this user data has been shared for years. Perhaps FB can argue this was "informed consent". However users can change their minds in light of more information. They should be able to revoke that consent going forward. Will all that "leaked" user data FB has intentionally shared self-destruct after some period of time? Unfortunately, no. It seems to me that, in the main, the parties that have the greatest incentive to monitor users messaging are in fact companies like FB and their clients. They have a financial incentive that is in the aggregate far greater than any individual (petty criminal, etc.). Collecting user data has become their business. "It is literally just what we do." Period. Finally, thanks to the explosive growth of single websites into vast monopolies like Facebook that extend their reach into nearly every corner of the internet, they, the companies behind these websites, are in the best position to do it. It should be self-evident but maybe needs to be restated: These companies cannot protect the user from the company itself. The amount of trust required of the user depending on these websites is simply mind-blowing (from the perspective of someone who has lived in times when no such trust was necessary). Thats only an opinion. I respect any disagreement and welcome karma subtraction as a means to express it.

matuszeg 9y ago
Your statement on trust cannot be restated enough. My additional concern is that, I do not use Facebook. I deleted my account like 10 years. Yet they still retain data on me, not only without my consent. They have the opposite of my consent. I explicitly told them to delete everything they had on me and I am opting out of their service. Yet articles like this pop up time and time again[1]. There is talks about them scanning every picture on facebook for faces and building profiles of everyone, including non-users. How am I, a person who has no Facebook and does not want anything to do with them supposed to stop them from monitoring and tracking me. Imagine if in high school you found out some guy in your class was keeping records of the structure of your face, or the websites you visit and you confront them to stop and all they say is other students have allowed me to do this so I keep everyone's records to make it easier for me to track the people who gave me permission. I assume everyone would not be comfortable with this, especially if they then go to sell that data to the students running for class president so they can manipulate your friends to harass you to vote for their candidate. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/19/facebooks-tracking-of-non-users-ruled-illegal-again/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/19/facebooks-tracking-of-non-...

pasbesoin 9y ago

Ha, this just confirms what I thought to myself but decided not to comment on, reading some other recent Facebook-disaster post here. Mark has a different Facebook. I bet he doesn't see ads, unless he wants to. And, come to think of it, when he or other blessed entities delete something, it's really gone. Come to think of it, I wonder whether their data gets scooped up by the various monitoring and collection tools that are doubtless built in to the product and its administrative interface. Are they really dogfooding their own product, at this point?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tzakrajs 9y ago
> but decided not to comment on Ahh, you were so close too!
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  LOL. Touche. I'd better hit the delete link here before it disappears.
matuszeg 9y ago
I would assume he has an admin type of account on Facebook, but does that even matter tho. He and many other employees have direct access to their databases and code. They can do whatever they want and there do not seem to be any checks in place to prevent crime/abuse. If some engineer at Facebook wants to log into the account of someone they have a crush on, search for nudes or something else nefarious, I have yet to learn of any systems in place to prevent that from happening besides Facebook telling us to trust them. They used to have a master password to log into any account[1]. They say they replaced this with a special tool you need "permission" to use. Quote from the article "Finally, while the interviewee says the ‘master password’ has been deprecated, employees can still access your profile through a special tool, but they need to provide a reason for why they’re doing it. If they get audited down the line and fail to provide an explanation, they can be fired" That sounds like a system where you trust everyone and audit later to verify nothing bad happened. Imo these systems are put in place to hide abuse not reveal it because they are reactionary instead of preventative. That entire system of checking employees from abusing data, relies of everyone trusting the people in charge at Facebook to do the right thing, insert "dumb fucks" Zuckerberg quote here[2]. Imo it is a matter of time before we find out about wide scale massive data abuse from Facebook employees. Either an insider feeding out data to others or someone on the inside listening to hedge fund managers private conversations to insider trade off of. I am just generally tired of everyone trusting everyone all the time. We have to have rules and systems in place to eliminate the need for trust. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/rumpus-facebook-privacy/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/rumpus-facebook-privacy/ [2] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes

varenc 9y ago

Really confused about what this story is about since I have no problem deleting years-old messages from Facebook messenger. (Whether that really removes the bytes or flips a delete flag who can say) Edit: as others have pointed out, this only deletes things locally for you which makes this a pretty deceptive feature... https://m.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/242107552657620 https://m.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/242107552657620

adventured 9y ago
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong: I believe that still leaves a copy of the message with the receiving party. That's the issue of contention here. The messages were also deleted for the receiver of Zuckerberg's messages.
aarongolliver 9y ago
That only deletes it from your account. The person who received it still has their copy.
ladberg 9y ago
If you delete those then the recipient can still see them (it just deletes them for you). Zuckerberg's messages (and the new "unsend" feature) delete the messages for everyone, which is different.
- varenc 9y ago
  Wow thanks for clarifying. That is absolutely deceptive. The UI never mentions that, but I found some support docs that do. I imagine the majority of people deleting messages aren't aware of this...
  - jdtang13 9y ago
    I think it's a little funny but I wouldn't call it deceptive. If you delete your local copy of a text message, that doesn't remove it from the other person's phone. Same thing with messages on AIM and IRC. So un-sending seems to be the far less obvious feature.

andy_ppp 9y ago

Does Hacker News really delete your comment if you delete it?

cblock811 9y ago
I trust that they do, which is more than can be said for Facebook at this point.
- jstanley 9y ago
  I highly doubt that they do.
  - loceng 9y ago
    It's moot if there's anyone or service doing backups of HN, whether for archiving purposes or other. I know Reddit has a few services doing that for threads -- which recently lead to evidence on /r/legaladvice that can be used against an employer as both the employer and employee posted separately, the manager essentially stating that they wanted to fire the employee in retaliation and for not participating (regardless of their cultural/religious practices, and having been told so prior to continued violations). Unfortunately we don't have government organizations that help with moderating discussion (like a therapist would), such as a parent would help children learn how to communicate with others in difficult situations, to deal with emotions, etc; and if bad behaviour, giving someone time-out until they can "play nice" again. We have to of course make an environment good enough, rewarding enough to be part of, that it's an incentive for everyone to want to play nice. Perhaps we need to come up with a new system (separate from legal system, or part of justice-education system) for dealing with situations that teach compassion when compassion/understanding is missing, e.g. should bullying a crime, or who should we leave that up to - is it even required to bring all participants related to bullying together, parents of the perpetrator and the victim, and create a healing circle to uncover the deeper underlying issues? The whole point would be to rally support, so we can build stronger, deep community - and society could, like with criminal law, have fines or other limitations created if people decide to opt-out of this system. We really need to become more comfortable with accountability, that our actions have consequences - though we also must support a practice of learning, mistakes happen during learning, etc; there's pretending to have learned, and genuine change/evolution in a person's thinking and behaviour, difficult to perhaps tell in some cases online.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

propman 9y ago

This is awesome! 17 year old me shit talking with friends shouldn't be used against me if I were to obtain a position of power and be blackmailed by that. Also, any message without context could be construed as sexist, racist, privalidged, ablist or whatever. Really positive development from this entire mess of a scandal.

Sir_Substance 9y ago
Oh sweet summer child. Those messages aren't going to be deleted, they're just going to be hidden. They could be un-unsent as easily as they could be unsent. If you don't trust your friends not to blackmail you, you can't trust them not to just save every message themselves at the time you send it anyway. Even so, "unsending" messages is a meaningless gesture to security because you have no way to verify that anything has been destroyed. Facebooks track record clearly demonstrates that in the absence of evidence, they definitely aren't destroying the data. This feature will be marginally useful for correcting typos, and that's about it.
- loceng 9y ago
  I doubt the worry was a friend attempting to blackmail.
pound 9y ago
/me starts taking screenshots of conversations with others.. ;)
tobtoh 9y ago
Also means people can be harassed and the offender can delete the message after they know the person has seen the message (via the read receipt).
- codedokode 9y ago
  Deleting the message will look like admitting a thing done wrong.

MBCook 9y ago

A.K.A. Zuckerberg did something that was supposed to be impossible and to explain how he did it they have now announced a new feature they just thought up as cover.

curiousgal 9y ago
Reddit should have done the same. /s https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
- deft 9y ago
  Came here to say this :). Abuse of admin privileges on social networks has always been a problem. Only recently are the networks worth billions of dollars though.
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    It raises the question...what other liberties did Zuckerberg take on facebook? The reddit thing was petty, but didn't really do any material damage. Uber's God View was more troubling...showing how you could track politicians/celebs usage of the platform. But facebook...this admission opens the door to speculation that Zuckerberg could have theoretically taken ad hoc 'God Mode' actions against users of his personal interest...read their messages, view their activity logs, etc. Only Facebook knows, for now.
    - scarmig 9y ago
      Why wouldn't you trust him?
      - sverige 9y ago
        Exactly. Also, they're a private company. They can do whatever they like with their data per the ToS. Why is this even a concern?

nashashmi 9y ago

Note: They arent talking about DELETING MESSAGES, but UNSENDING messages. Rant: FB is a data hog. But shares data with ad companies. To entice them into advertising. Otherwise their ad platform sucks.

jakebasile 9y ago

Please excuse some meta commentary here. Is HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I cannot believe the amount of posts about Facebook, condemning Facebook, blaming Facebook, assuming the worst motives of Facebook, and picking apart every word said by Facebook executives. In every post's comments there are the same tired "you are the product", "I deleted Facebook and if you don't you're an idiot", "dumb fucks trust me" comments. It's getting so that I don't even want to refresh here, since at any given time a chunk of the headlines are taken up with the same old shit hating on Facebook. I roll my eyes and move on usually, but it's getting to me to see a forum I enjoy devolve into a negative hate train of spite. I don't work for Facebook, they thought I wasn't smart enough to work there. I have no financial interest in Facebook. I do use Facebook moderately often. I'm mostly just tired of seeing the negativity and hate.

toufka 9y ago
Because the underlying issue is right now one of the largest and most intrinsically important and unresolved issues for not just our industry, but for our society. You're effectively on the front-line of a social discourse that will eventually settle to become part of our social fabric. And on that front line there's a lot of thrashing about - but that's a good thing. It's worth our time and effort to bring up the issues, hash them out, run through ideas, gather evidence , etc.
praneshp 9y ago
> s HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I I've been here 3-4 years, and Fb (and Uber) have a special level of hatred here. If my first job had been at facebook I'd have stayed off here because I'd have found the toxicity impossible to take. On the other hand, people fall over themselves to defend Elon Musk for doing pretty much the same thing Uber did: Kill a person due to misleading marketing, enforced by a statement with more misleading stuff.
AlexandrB 9y ago
I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result. I also think it deserves every bit of it and many of its social media peers do too (LinkedIn is basically Facebook with even more "dark patterns"). Regarding some of the specific comments you're seeing repeated - yes "you are the product" gets trotted out a lot - but it's basically correct, isn't it? You haven't offered any counter-argument here. Pointing out that Facebook's material incentives are absolutely not aligned with those of their users is always going to be relevant when discussing how Facebook handles user data. Facebook could minimize the data they gather instead of maximizing it, they could give users fine-grained control over what data "partners" get to use/target, they could make the defaults for many options private. There's no incentive to do any of this though - so in many cases they do the opposite [1]. [1] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

anigbrowl 9y ago

Seeing as how people already record sketchy conversations by screenshotting them this will only impress the naive. Screenshots aren't absolutely perfect as evidence, but since error level analysis can show up many kinds of graphic manipulation, they're pretty good on a practical level.

matte_black 9y ago
What’s naive is to even believe a screenshot. They can easily be faked. In fact I think there’s entire apps just for this purpose. You would never know the difference. You can also just straight up edit HTML and screenshot that. Screenshots as evidence, how laughable.
- abrahamepton 9y ago
  You completely missed the entire second half of the last sentence, which refutes your point.

master_ant 9y ago

"And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages. We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not." This says a lot about the current situation. What else don't we know?

Medox 9y ago

This was discussed and patented already in June 2016. Here is an article, including a link to the patent: http://techpp.com/2016/06/24/facebook-messenger-unsend-message/ http://techpp.com/2016/06/24/facebook-messenger-unsend-messa... . Hardly something they have started to put together after the scandal, but maybe the worst timing or idea to go back to now...

ppbutt 9y ago

Zuck is a dumb fuck

dang 9y ago
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We eventually ban accounts that do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sAbakumoff 9y ago

Questions I have: what's the number of Mark's messages that have been deleted before upcoming Congressional hearings? Is it greater or less than those 33K emails that Hillary Clinton has deleted after getting the subpoena? Does Mark understand that after uncovering this story his career is most likely ruined forever?