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This is misdirection plain and simple. In the best most convincing way. Get tunnel vision (sorry) nerds to make an honest display of their ignorance of the big

This is misdirection plain and simple. In the best most convincing way. Get tunnel vision (sorry) nerds to make an honest display of their ignorance of the bigger picture at Meta. Aww shucks we don't know where that data comes from.... Of course senior engineers don't know where the data comes from exactly. Does your mechanic know where each tire comes from or care? Does your fav restaurant chef know each field that a produce came from? The suppliers know that info. I know beyond any doubt that there are most definitively some people that know at least roughly where most data about most subjects are at Meta. I'm sure the data is a vastly beyond what a human can process. However some people there know where to go looking. The truth is in the Piles of money they generate by selling that data. Awww gee wizz your honor. We have no idea how we do it. People just keep throwing piles of money at us so we keep taking it. I don't know why they do it. We definitely don't have mountains of highly specialized data on our users that we tell them we can get exactly what they want then provide that info to them. Somehow though when the court asks without piles of money we just can't make that magic happen...........

notacoward 4y ago
> there are most definitively some people that know at least roughly "At least roughly" is doing a lot of work here. I think what you're getting at is that there are people who know which storage systems are likely to hold that data, but knowing exactly which objects do is far more challenging. Copies get made while data pipelines are tweaked, and then forgotten. Copies get made internally on storage systems as disks/machines fail and get repaired, as rebalancing occurs, and in other cases that typically only one or two members of the team understand at all. (I worked on one of Facebook's largest storage systems for two years BTW.) Copies get made for AI training, experiments, shadow-traffic generation, etc. Could they do better? Should they do better? Yes and yes. But it's not a lie to say nobody knows how to find every last orphan and fragment. They can pretty reliably delete everything they could find to sell, but that's a very different thing and you're conflating the two.
- citizenpaul 4y ago
  I'm saying they have vast mountains of data on people. They make enough money from it to be one of the most profitable companies on the planet. This is not happening by accident. I'm quite certain that if I showed up to FB with a $50 million dollar ad campaign to run they would have quite the opposite story about their data knowledge. Marching dozens of people into the room promising they can slice and dice every bit of info down to the atom for my needs. Yet in court they want to claim they live by the seat of their pants. Its a deception tactic. Even though I'm sure its as you describe partly true in technical concept. I do believe that FB is the least privacy invasive of all the big tech giants for what its worth. Nothing against them. I actually think this case is an intentional aggravation to the courts to have regulation created on data collection. That way FAANGM can cement themselves as the offical national data brokers with costly startup regulation for any compeditors.
  - notacoward 4y ago
    > I'm quite certain Based on what? > they would have quite the opposite story about their data knowledge As I said, they can probably delete everything they could sell. What's left are fragments, which are still a real concern but not enough to use for ad targeting and certainly not enough to satisfy a big-money customer. They might take that $50M anyway, but it would be under false pretenses and that's a very different issue.

notacoward 4y ago

> there are most definitively some people that know at least roughly "At least roughly" is doing a lot of work here. I think what you're getting at is that there are people who know which storage systems are likely to hold that data, but knowing exactly which objects do is far more challenging. Copies get made while data pipelines are tweaked, and then forgotten. Copies get made internally on storage systems as disks/machines fail and get repaired, as rebalancing occurs, and in other cases that typically only one or two members of the team understand at all. (I worked on one of Facebook's largest storage systems for two years BTW.) Copies get made for AI training, experiments, shadow-traffic generation, etc. Could they do better? Should they do better? Yes and yes. But it's not a lie to say nobody knows how to find every last orphan and fragment. They can pretty reliably delete everything they could find to sell, but that's a very different thing and you're conflating the two.

citizenpaul 4y ago
I'm saying they have vast mountains of data on people. They make enough money from it to be one of the most profitable companies on the planet. This is not happening by accident. I'm quite certain that if I showed up to FB with a $50 million dollar ad campaign to run they would have quite the opposite story about their data knowledge. Marching dozens of people into the room promising they can slice and dice every bit of info down to the atom for my needs. Yet in court they want to claim they live by the seat of their pants. Its a deception tactic. Even though I'm sure its as you describe partly true in technical concept. I do believe that FB is the least privacy invasive of all the big tech giants for what its worth. Nothing against them. I actually think this case is an intentional aggravation to the courts to have regulation created on data collection. That way FAANGM can cement themselves as the offical national data brokers with costly startup regulation for any compeditors.
- notacoward 4y ago
  > I'm quite certain Based on what? > they would have quite the opposite story about their data knowledge As I said, they can probably delete everything they could sell. What's left are fragments, which are still a real concern but not enough to use for ad targeting and certainly not enough to satisfy a big-money customer. They might take that $50M anyway, but it would be under false pretenses and that's a very different issue.