26 ms·

Wouldn't be surprised if they haven't even written the code to actually delete stuff.

by marto1 6y ago

titzer 6y ago
They will mouth some words about "our high availability data replication and backups are not designed to delete information instantly". Meanwhile, their metric ton of machine learning has already been loaded up with your behavioral traces and cannot be unlearned. It'll still predict your behavior well enough to target ads, even if the raw trace of what you did is gone.
- programmarchy 6y ago
  Wouldn't you say the "right to be forgotten" includes deleting the weights and biases that have been accumulated for a person?
  - ev1 6y ago
    Absolutely, everything needs to go.
    - titzer 6y ago
      I totally agree. But they can't do that. Or at least, it's hard. And they'll lie about it being impossible.
bobthechef 6y ago
Given how they and companies like them behave, how they drag their feet and stall all the time, I am not surprised. I suspect Facebook is too useful as an intelligence and surveillance tool to lead to some kind of meaningful legislation, penalties, whatever. If you can delete your data, then you can hide your tracks. Also, even if we assume that the US at least has in its favor a cultural apprehension toward surveillance, China doesn't, so you'll have a situation where a country is monitoring everything to death while you don't know what's going on. At least that might be the thinking. If that is so, I cannot imagine any realistic solutions. A race toward the bottom. You would need to ween people off Facebook, to cause them to leave the platform in droves. The only way to do that is to offer something better and that something would need to have privacy "built-in" in some way and either remain profitable or decentralized.
stevehawk 6y ago
actually, that was the situation at one point. Facebook never wrote the code to delete things from their CDN.. so if you deleted your photo from your profile or album or whatever but someone else still had a link then that photo was still available. I assume that's changed since 2010 - https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-does-not-erase-user-deleted-content/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-does-not-erase-user-d...

Wouldn't be surprised if they haven't even written the code to actually delete stuff.

by marto1 6y ago

Wouldn't be surprised if they haven't even written the code to actually delete stuff.

They will mouth some words about "our high availability data replication and backups are not designed to delete information instantly". Meanwhile, their metric ton of machine learning has already been loaded up with your behavioral traces and cannot be unlearned. It'll still predict your behavior well enough to target ads, even if the raw trace of what you did is gone.

programmarchy 6y ago
Wouldn't you say the "right to be forgotten" includes deleting the weights and biases that have been accumulated for a person?
- ev1 6y ago
  Absolutely, everything needs to go.
  - titzer 6y ago
    I totally agree. But they can't do that. Or at least, it's hard. And they'll lie about it being impossible.

bobthechef 6y ago

Given how they and companies like them behave, how they drag their feet and stall all the time, I am not surprised. I suspect Facebook is too useful as an intelligence and surveillance tool to lead to some kind of meaningful legislation, penalties, whatever. If you can delete your data, then you can hide your tracks. Also, even if we assume that the US at least has in its favor a cultural apprehension toward surveillance, China doesn't, so you'll have a situation where a country is monitoring everything to death while you don't know what's going on. At least that might be the thinking. If that is so, I cannot imagine any realistic solutions. A race toward the bottom. You would need to ween people off Facebook, to cause them to leave the platform in droves. The only way to do that is to offer something better and that something would need to have privacy "built-in" in some way and either remain profitable or decentralized.

stevehawk 6y ago

actually, that was the situation at one point. Facebook never wrote the code to delete things from their CDN.. so if you deleted your photo from your profile or album or whatever but someone else still had a link then that photo was still available. I assume that's changed since 2010 - https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-does-not-erase-user-deleted-content/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-does-not-erase-user-d...