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//Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. Are you saying that Facebook doesn’t enable full account delete outside of countries that require it by law?

by j2bax 5y ago

IlPeach 5y ago
Would you be surprised?
swamp-agr 5y ago
I don't know - whether they partially disable functions on purpose - or there are region-dependant backend code errors.
Nextgrid 5y ago
There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow. Given FB's business model, and the fact that they create "shadow" profiles for folks who don't even have FB accounts, I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend that your account has been "deleted", all the data still exists for their use. Which is why, when I left Facebook in 2014, rather than attempting to delete or disable the account, I posted a goodbye to those on FB that I cared about and explained exactly why I was leaving (their predatory and invasive business model). I then logged out and haven't returned. I did this because I figured that any activity on their platform would be logged and stored with everything else they'd already collected. And that was seven years ago. Given what we've seen from them since then, it's pretty clear that I was right. Just go away and don't look back. Otherwise you'll just give them more data.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    > I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend that your account has been "deleted", all the data still exists for their use. They don't even have to pretend to delete your account, they can actually delete it. But through some linguistic slight-of-hand (i.e., lying) they obscure the fact that your account is not all the data they have on you. Your "account", in a strict sense might just be your username and password. It happens to also be associated with the entire pile of data that is a profile. Once a user no longer has an account, it's what you call a "shadow profile".
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      >They don't even have to pretend to delete your account, they can actually delete it. But through some linguistic slight-of-hand (i.e., lying) they obscure the fact that your account is not all the data they have on you. Your "account", in a strict sense might just be your username and password. It happens to also be associated with the entire pile of data that is a profile. Once a user no longer has an account, it's what you call a "shadow profile". A likely scenario. Although I'd say that removing a userid and password from their auth db doesn't qualify as "deleting" an account. Rather, that's disabling an account. And IIUC (I'm not in the EU and not familiar with all the details) the GDPR/EU privacy folks would likely agree with that assessment too. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the GDPR could weigh in on what sorts of fines could be levied against Facebook for pulling a stunt like that on European citizens? Edit: Levied is a more accurate term than "leveled".
- swamp-agr 5y ago
  From data modelling point of view it's a challenge to wipe the user data since it will affect a social graph. And there're different strategies to handle corner cases (e.g. how to deal with reactions/replies on "deleted" comments or with reactions on your photos or your reactions on different news, mark as deleted and wipe the content or completely remove nested graph). And it actually makes user tracking much harder (please keep in mind, they're tracking users that have not register yet, in that case user profile might be converted from one user type to another if they are going to continue track you (why didn't want that?)). It might be much easier to extend account entity with something like: - is_deleted (boolean) - deleted_time (utctime) - is_suing_us (boolean) - legal_case_id ...
  - dleslie 5y ago
    This all seems to be problems for them surveillance capitalist, and not the user.
    - avs733 5y ago
      exactly...I regularly see arguments about how technical compliance with laws or user wishes as 'its hard' as if 'hard' is a counter argument to compliance...
    - sgregnt 5y ago
      Is facebook here different than other apps? If you publically post something on internet, good luck trying to delete it...
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        Facebook collects way more data than what you choose to publish. Not to mention, if you want to delete something, Facebook should delete it. Whether other third-parties archive it is beyond scope.
- 1024core 5y ago
  So why are there no consequences? Why isn't there a red corner Interpol arrest warrant for Zuck out?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    The regulators who are supposed to enforce the GDPR are either incompetent or unwilling to do so. I suspect there might be political problems with stepping up enforcement considering a lot of politicians rely on social media & ads (which is powered by non-consensual data processing) to help with their (re)-election.
  - ta1234567890 5y ago
    Because the US government wants to maintain access to FBs data. Shutting down FB would be a big blow to surveillance, hence they will never do anything serious against it. They’ll just put on a show, scream publicly in outrage about what FB does or whatever, and then nothing substantial will come out of it, because they never intended to do anything in the first place.
TomSwirly 5y ago
They flout the GDPR, so why wouldn't they flout this?
Gulfick 5y ago
Looks like I'll be on Facebook forever.

//Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. Are you saying that Facebook doesn’t enable full account delete outside of countries that require it by law?

by j2bax 5y ago

//Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. Are you saying that Facebook doesn’t enable full account delete outside of countries that require it by law?

IlPeach 5y ago

Would you be surprised?

swamp-agr 5y ago

I don't know - whether they partially disable functions on purpose - or there are region-dependant backend code errors.

Nextgrid 5y ago

There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow.

nobody9999 5y ago
>There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow. Given FB's business model, and the fact that they create "shadow" profiles for folks who don't even have FB accounts, I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend that your account has been "deleted", all the data still exists for their use. Which is why, when I left Facebook in 2014, rather than attempting to delete or disable the account, I posted a goodbye to those on FB that I cared about and explained exactly why I was leaving (their predatory and invasive business model). I then logged out and haven't returned. I did this because I figured that any activity on their platform would be logged and stored with everything else they'd already collected. And that was seven years ago. Given what we've seen from them since then, it's pretty clear that I was right. Just go away and don't look back. Otherwise you'll just give them more data.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  > I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend that your account has been "deleted", all the data still exists for their use. They don't even have to pretend to delete your account, they can actually delete it. But through some linguistic slight-of-hand (i.e., lying) they obscure the fact that your account is not all the data they have on you. Your "account", in a strict sense might just be your username and password. It happens to also be associated with the entire pile of data that is a profile. Once a user no longer has an account, it's what you call a "shadow profile".
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >They don't even have to pretend to delete your account, they can actually delete it. But through some linguistic slight-of-hand (i.e., lying) they obscure the fact that your account is not all the data they have on you. Your "account", in a strict sense might just be your username and password. It happens to also be associated with the entire pile of data that is a profile. Once a user no longer has an account, it's what you call a "shadow profile". A likely scenario. Although I'd say that removing a userid and password from their auth db doesn't qualify as "deleting" an account. Rather, that's disabling an account. And IIUC (I'm not in the EU and not familiar with all the details) the GDPR/EU privacy folks would likely agree with that assessment too. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the GDPR could weigh in on what sorts of fines could be levied against Facebook for pulling a stunt like that on European citizens? Edit: Levied is a more accurate term than "leveled".
swamp-agr 5y ago
From data modelling point of view it's a challenge to wipe the user data since it will affect a social graph. And there're different strategies to handle corner cases (e.g. how to deal with reactions/replies on "deleted" comments or with reactions on your photos or your reactions on different news, mark as deleted and wipe the content or completely remove nested graph). And it actually makes user tracking much harder (please keep in mind, they're tracking users that have not register yet, in that case user profile might be converted from one user type to another if they are going to continue track you (why didn't want that?)). It might be much easier to extend account entity with something like: - is_deleted (boolean) - deleted_time (utctime) - is_suing_us (boolean) - legal_case_id ...
- dleslie 5y ago
  This all seems to be problems for them surveillance capitalist, and not the user.
  - avs733 5y ago
    exactly...I regularly see arguments about how technical compliance with laws or user wishes as 'its hard' as if 'hard' is a counter argument to compliance...
  - sgregnt 5y ago
    Is facebook here different than other apps? If you publically post something on internet, good luck trying to delete it...
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Facebook collects way more data than what you choose to publish. Not to mention, if you want to delete something, Facebook should delete it. Whether other third-parties archive it is beyond scope.
1024core 5y ago
So why are there no consequences? Why isn't there a red corner Interpol arrest warrant for Zuck out?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The regulators who are supposed to enforce the GDPR are either incompetent or unwilling to do so. I suspect there might be political problems with stepping up enforcement considering a lot of politicians rely on social media & ads (which is powered by non-consensual data processing) to help with their (re)-election.
- ta1234567890 5y ago
  Because the US government wants to maintain access to FBs data. Shutting down FB would be a big blow to surveillance, hence they will never do anything serious against it. They’ll just put on a show, scream publicly in outrage about what FB does or whatever, and then nothing substantial will come out of it, because they never intended to do anything in the first place.

TomSwirly 5y ago

They flout the GDPR, so why wouldn't they flout this?

Gulfick 5y ago

Looks like I'll be on Facebook forever.