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Does anyone know if /anyone/ has successfully gotten a large chunk of the data FB stores about them from them since GDPR went into effect. I vaguely remember re

Does anyone know if /anyone/ has successfully gotten a large chunk of the data FB stores about them from them since GDPR went into effect. I vaguely remember reading some story of "thousands of pages of print-outs" -- I wonder how much of this is simply that no one outside of FB has ever seen large chunks of the data that is stored an worries about a PR crisis? -- Kudos to the author, but I'm guessing that at some point this will have to go to some sort of legal battle as FB may have a /novel/ interpretation of the law, but clearly that interpretation was not made up on the fly by a customer support email person....

throwaway2022 7y ago
former FB employee here There is a retention policy for every bit of data we store and no data is kept longer than absolutely required! This is also true for backups! We also anonymize and aggregate data whenever possible! Some people always bring up that the data still exist in abstract form in ML models...but afaik most/all models were constantly rebuild with fresh data. I can't think of a model that still uses data from let's say 2 years ago. Sensitive data such as location for example was only kept in encrypted form for a few minutes until the aggregation jobs had processed it. Such data stores were guarded like fort knox with multiple lines of defense!
- tlavoie 7y ago
  You would think then, that Facebook would make it easier to actually go and delete old data, rather than forcing the most motivated people to go through hoops such as browser plugins and other scripts. If it doesn't matter to the business, then just give people the option to set a sunset period and have the system do it for them. As a user, I was happy enough sharing pictures of cats and nature hikes, but there was zero value to me in keeping any of it. With all the obvious, public screw-ups, I took the nuclear option and deleted my account.

throwaway2022 7y ago

former FB employee here There is a retention policy for every bit of data we store and no data is kept longer than absolutely required! This is also true for backups! We also anonymize and aggregate data whenever possible! Some people always bring up that the data still exist in abstract form in ML models...but afaik most/all models were constantly rebuild with fresh data. I can't think of a model that still uses data from let's say 2 years ago. Sensitive data such as location for example was only kept in encrypted form for a few minutes until the aggregation jobs had processed it. Such data stores were guarded like fort knox with multiple lines of defense!

tlavoie 7y ago
You would think then, that Facebook would make it easier to actually go and delete old data, rather than forcing the most motivated people to go through hoops such as browser plugins and other scripts. If it doesn't matter to the business, then just give people the option to set a sunset period and have the system do it for them. As a user, I was happy enough sharing pictures of cats and nature hikes, but there was zero value to me in keeping any of it. With all the obvious, public screw-ups, I took the nuclear option and deleted my account.