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What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data? I'm sure this is simply marking it as hidden in their database

What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data? I'm sure this is simply marking it as hidden in their database. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but to me the only way to take back something you say on social media, is to never have posted it in the first place.

mdjasper 7y ago
There are a million reasons to agree that the data is never actually deleted * need to retain data to fulfill government requests * internal auditing * it's all backed up in some "data lake" somewhere to do internal ml or analytics on * hundreds of copies in database backups from different times * internal logs that contain the data * it's already been analyzed and aggregated into learning products and models that aren't going to be recomputed It's not being "paranoid". As someone who has worked on large scale saas, I say: there is zero, 0, ZERO, 0.00 chance of that data every actually being deleted
- nkassis 7y ago
  Right and deleting is usually expensive in large systems it's easier to thombstone and delete later
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  Ever is a very very long time indeed. Facebook will go out of business or get sold eventually and delete it all to save money or by accident. See also: Myspace accidentally dumping everything pre-2015 https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/18/myspace-lost-12-years-music-photos/ https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/18/myspace-lost-12-years-mu...
  - monocasa 7y ago
    For similar reasons, I doubt very much that they actually deleted everything they said they did. I know that they were backing up to tape and storing it at Iron Mountain years prior.
    - dx034 7y ago
      But someone has to pay that bill. If Facebook ever fails, I doubt that someone would keep data centers full of information around without getting paid.
      - monocasa 7y ago
        They would sell it with their other assets.
- athenot 7y ago
  > As someone who has worked on large scale saas, I say: there is zero, 0, ZERO, 0.00 chance of that data every actually being deleted Unless that is built by design. I happen to also work on a large scale SaaS where we take this stuff very seriously and I can say it is possible to protect this data. However I will agree that this adds considerable complexity, but for some organizations, that is totally worth it. > need to retain data to fulfill government requests That's a choice, not a requirement. If you encrypt the data and purposely don't store the keys yourself but instead have the customer store them, then you don't have anything of value for the government. > internal auditing Personally Identifiable Info is not something we want to peruse. In fact we purposely don't want to see it because that eliminates a potential for mishandling. > it's all backed up in some "data lake" somewhere to do internal ml or analytics on That kind of application shouldn't give carte blanche to disregard retention policies. You can run those applications against replicated shards of the original data; and when the original gets reclaimed, so does the replica. > hundreds of copies in database backups from different times Storing useless data forever is not cheap, especially at scale. Better store what needs to be stored and free up what can be freed when retention policies kick in (or user requests it). > internal logs that contain the data That's ground for failing certain compliance audits. Logs should never contain PII in the first place, that's an operational failure. > it's already been analyzed and aggregated into learning products and models that aren't going to be recomputed That's a tricky one, but if those are actual models instead of giant lookup tables, one could assume the data is not reconstructible. However, that needs to be a design consideration of the models themselves, to prevent user data from persisting.
- ddorian43 7y ago
  Say someone uploads pedophilia images to facebook. Does it ever get deleted ? Or stays in the datalake ?
ilikehurdles 7y ago
> What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data? Close to 0%. There is no way they're actually deleting things on the backend, but this could help prevent your content from indexed by search engines inside and outside of facebook.
jyriand 7y ago
Last I remember it was supposed to be a good software engineering practice to never actually delete data from database but just mark it as deleted.
- javagram 7y ago
  GDPR has changed this. FWIW I’ve seen comments from a privacy engineer at google who posted here and said they actually do work hard to delete your data. I’d expect Facebook and google to successfully delete the data (after giving 3-6 months for backups to age out) but wouldn’t trust most smaller operations to do so. And yeah, that doesn’t mean ML models or whatever but just the retrievable copies of your photos and text posts.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    > GDPR has changed this. That's a far, far cry from the reality of "possibly prosecutable in EU in some scenarios." We aren't even using a website right now that's in GDPR jurisdiction. But there's also a weird fetishization of GDPR I've noticed where people invoke it like "heh, my dad works for Xbox. just you wait buddy, he'll have you banned."
    - ironmagma 7y ago
      When a feature (e.g. thoroughly scrubbed data deletion procedure) is introduced into a product, it is often far easier to apply it laterally to all customers than just a subset. For this reason, GDPR has knock-on effects that benefit all users of certain services.
    - javagram 7y ago
      I think it’s changed what is best practice. Unless you plan to never introduce your product in the EU, designing your product so that it cannot ever delete data is a bad idea. In my experience I’ve definitely seen GDPR result in a large company having developers looking at how data can actually be deleted and not just set to deleted=true. I don’t think my company’s lawyers were alone in thinking this suddenly became more important than before.
qxcbr 7y ago
For legal reasons, there's a 0% chance that it's immediately deleted, but I'm sure that after a few months some cronjob prunes the database.
paulddraper 7y ago
I'm guessing GDPR increased the chances a lot.

mdjasper 7y ago

There are a million reasons to agree that the data is never actually deleted * need to retain data to fulfill government requests * internal auditing * it's all backed up in some "data lake" somewhere to do internal ml or analytics on * hundreds of copies in database backups from different times * internal logs that contain the data * it's already been analyzed and aggregated into learning products and models that aren't going to be recomputed It's not being "paranoid". As someone who has worked on large scale saas, I say: there is zero, 0, ZERO, 0.00 chance of that data every actually being deleted

nkassis 7y ago
Right and deleting is usually expensive in large systems it's easier to thombstone and delete later
ForHackernews 7y ago
Ever is a very very long time indeed. Facebook will go out of business or get sold eventually and delete it all to save money or by accident. See also: Myspace accidentally dumping everything pre-2015 https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/18/myspace-lost-12-years-music-photos/ https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/18/myspace-lost-12-years-mu...
- monocasa 7y ago
  For similar reasons, I doubt very much that they actually deleted everything they said they did. I know that they were backing up to tape and storing it at Iron Mountain years prior.
  - dx034 7y ago
    But someone has to pay that bill. If Facebook ever fails, I doubt that someone would keep data centers full of information around without getting paid.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      They would sell it with their other assets.
athenot 7y ago
> As someone who has worked on large scale saas, I say: there is zero, 0, ZERO, 0.00 chance of that data every actually being deleted Unless that is built by design. I happen to also work on a large scale SaaS where we take this stuff very seriously and I can say it is possible to protect this data. However I will agree that this adds considerable complexity, but for some organizations, that is totally worth it. > need to retain data to fulfill government requests That's a choice, not a requirement. If you encrypt the data and purposely don't store the keys yourself but instead have the customer store them, then you don't have anything of value for the government. > internal auditing Personally Identifiable Info is not something we want to peruse. In fact we purposely don't want to see it because that eliminates a potential for mishandling. > it's all backed up in some "data lake" somewhere to do internal ml or analytics on That kind of application shouldn't give carte blanche to disregard retention policies. You can run those applications against replicated shards of the original data; and when the original gets reclaimed, so does the replica. > hundreds of copies in database backups from different times Storing useless data forever is not cheap, especially at scale. Better store what needs to be stored and free up what can be freed when retention policies kick in (or user requests it). > internal logs that contain the data That's ground for failing certain compliance audits. Logs should never contain PII in the first place, that's an operational failure. > it's already been analyzed and aggregated into learning products and models that aren't going to be recomputed That's a tricky one, but if those are actual models instead of giant lookup tables, one could assume the data is not reconstructible. However, that needs to be a design consideration of the models themselves, to prevent user data from persisting.
ddorian43 7y ago
Say someone uploads pedophilia images to facebook. Does it ever get deleted ? Or stays in the datalake ?

ilikehurdles 7y ago

> What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data? Close to 0%. There is no way they're actually deleting things on the backend, but this could help prevent your content from indexed by search engines inside and outside of facebook.

jyriand 7y ago

Last I remember it was supposed to be a good software engineering practice to never actually delete data from database but just mark it as deleted.

javagram 7y ago
GDPR has changed this. FWIW I’ve seen comments from a privacy engineer at google who posted here and said they actually do work hard to delete your data. I’d expect Facebook and google to successfully delete the data (after giving 3-6 months for backups to age out) but wouldn’t trust most smaller operations to do so. And yeah, that doesn’t mean ML models or whatever but just the retrievable copies of your photos and text posts.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  > GDPR has changed this. That's a far, far cry from the reality of "possibly prosecutable in EU in some scenarios." We aren't even using a website right now that's in GDPR jurisdiction. But there's also a weird fetishization of GDPR I've noticed where people invoke it like "heh, my dad works for Xbox. just you wait buddy, he'll have you banned."
  - ironmagma 7y ago
    When a feature (e.g. thoroughly scrubbed data deletion procedure) is introduced into a product, it is often far easier to apply it laterally to all customers than just a subset. For this reason, GDPR has knock-on effects that benefit all users of certain services.
  - javagram 7y ago
    I think it’s changed what is best practice. Unless you plan to never introduce your product in the EU, designing your product so that it cannot ever delete data is a bad idea. In my experience I’ve definitely seen GDPR result in a large company having developers looking at how data can actually be deleted and not just set to deleted=true. I don’t think my company’s lawyers were alone in thinking this suddenly became more important than before.

qxcbr 7y ago

For legal reasons, there's a 0% chance that it's immediately deleted, but I'm sure that after a few months some cronjob prunes the database.

paulddraper 7y ago

I'm guessing GDPR increased the chances a lot.