6 ms·

Part of this is leftover tech culture from Facebook's early focus on Growth, Growth, and more Growth. Allowing for easy deletion of accounts was fundamentally a

Part of this is leftover tech culture from Facebook's early focus on Growth, Growth, and more Growth. Allowing for easy deletion of accounts was fundamentally at odds with user growth. It's refreshing to see that tech is now heading in a more socially responsible direction, but the industry still has a long way to go.

gumby 5y ago
I don't understand what a bunch of random companies have to do with facebook. In fact this problem predates the WWW...and predates the Internet!
itvision 5y ago
It's almost never been about growth. Actually deleting accounts means you're losing very valuable information about [past] customers, their behavior, geo, etc. Also some people may suddenly decide to delete their account and request its reactivation after a while. It also means you cannot use this data for forensics which is not such a rare occurrence. Storage is cheap, information is expensive.
fsckboy 5y ago
> It's refreshing to see that tech is now heading in a more socially responsible direction what are examples of tech heading in a more socially responsible direction?
- mrintellectual 5y ago
  Datacenter carbon neutrality and de-biasing ML models are two that I can recall off the top of my head. These are, of course, unrelated to account deletion, but it shows that big tech is at the very minimum aware that social responsibility is becoming a more important part of business.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > de-biasing ML models As exemplified by, for example, Google firing the two heads of their Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team...who had been researching bias? [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/13/22370158/google-ai-ethics-timnit-gebru-margaret-mitchell-firing-reputation https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/13/22370158/google-ai-ethics...
    - emteycz 5y ago
      Are these two the only people who study bias in the world?
      - Ansil849 5y ago
        Yes.
        emteycz 5y ago
        You must be mistaken. There is an entire department focused just on that at my local university, at least over 100 people. Plenty of candidates to replace those 2.
Ansil849 5y ago
> It's refreshing to see that tech is now heading in a more socially responsible direction What? Absolutely the opposite is true. Tech is now doing evil shit that was unthinkable ten years ago. Like Facebook using the phone number you put in as part of your 2FA for marketing purposes [1]. The only thing that's happening right now is tech companies are paying more lip service to giving a fuck about users, not actually giving a fuck about them. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your...

gumby 5y ago

I don't understand what a bunch of random companies have to do with facebook. In fact this problem predates the WWW...and predates the Internet!

itvision 5y ago

It's almost never been about growth. Actually deleting accounts means you're losing very valuable information about [past] customers, their behavior, geo, etc. Also some people may suddenly decide to delete their account and request its reactivation after a while. It also means you cannot use this data for forensics which is not such a rare occurrence. Storage is cheap, information is expensive.

fsckboy 5y ago

> It's refreshing to see that tech is now heading in a more socially responsible direction what are examples of tech heading in a more socially responsible direction?

mrintellectual 5y ago
Datacenter carbon neutrality and de-biasing ML models are two that I can recall off the top of my head. These are, of course, unrelated to account deletion, but it shows that big tech is at the very minimum aware that social responsibility is becoming a more important part of business.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > de-biasing ML models As exemplified by, for example, Google firing the two heads of their Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team...who had been researching bias? [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/13/22370158/google-ai-ethics-timnit-gebru-margaret-mitchell-firing-reputation https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/13/22370158/google-ai-ethics...
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Are these two the only people who study bias in the world?
    - Ansil849 5y ago
      Yes.
      - emteycz 5y ago
        You must be mistaken. There is an entire department focused just on that at my local university, at least over 100 people. Plenty of candidates to replace those 2.

Ansil849 5y ago

> It's refreshing to see that tech is now heading in a more socially responsible direction What? Absolutely the opposite is true. Tech is now doing evil shit that was unthinkable ten years ago. Like Facebook using the phone number you put in as part of your 2FA for marketing purposes [1]. The only thing that's happening right now is tech companies are paying more lip service to giving a fuck about users, not actually giving a fuck about them. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your...