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https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft_deletion https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft_deletion

by someothherguyy 2y ago

silisili 2y ago
It's absurd to me how soft deletion took over the entire industry and 'DELETE FROM' became taboo.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  Too many fat fingers, too many relations that were not suppose to break (or were supposed to be disjoint but weren't), too much regulatory uncertainty, both for deleting and keeping the data, etc etc
  - silisili 2y ago
    The regulatory aspect is one I get. The problem is that it infected the mindset of almost every company. Those that worked at companies who needed it brought the mindset everywhere. And like many technologies, people who study what big companies do mimic it everywhere, even where it's not needed. So your simple stupid SaaS company has some simple object that a user wants to delete that ends up living in a db somewhere... forever.
- msie 2y ago
  Not really, soft deletion has saved many people's bacon.
  - al_borland 2y ago
    That doesn’t mean soft delete should be the only option. With some of our processes, we soft delete for a period of time (2-4 weeks) to account for mistakes. Then, if on one tries to recover it after that time, it does the actual delete. This seems like a reasonable compromise to me. It offers a safety net, while still getting the job done. With as many data breaches as we see these days, I want my data gone. If someone gets a dump of the DB, a delete flag doesn’t matter. This was the primary reason I never got a DNA test, even though I want to see what my results would be. I never trusted the companies to store that data long term. If I could get a test where a company didn’t store the results after they were provided to me, I’d get one tomorrow.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      The AT&T leak was huge. :D There was also a leak in either 23andMe or some other company handling DNAs not too long ago (months, maybe 2 years >.>).
- friendzis 2y ago
  To `DELETE FROM` you have to have at least a relatively vague idea what you are doing. Go and find an organization that has their data and component dependency maps ready and up to date :) One hard delete can expose months worth of bugs.
  - silisili 2y ago
    'Our data design is too bad to allow anyone to delete anything' is not, to me, a valid reason to prevent actual deletion.
    - groestl 2y ago
      Enter Git. (FTR, I don't think it's bad data design. It's a tradeoff. Sometimes it's even a feature.)
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    Can't delete from backups, though.
    - friendzis 2y ago
      If you really cannot (although, most probably just burdensome), you can always render the data unreadable. E.g. by destroying the keys.
      - beejiu 2y ago
        Don't forget to backup those keys, though :)
- goosejuice 2y ago
  For every customer that legitimately wants their data deleted there's a hundred that complain their data is gone after confirming deletion. The same customers that mark your transactional email as spam then complain about not being able to get into their account. Exaggerating here, but I do think soft deletion practices can be partially blamed on real business problems. I'm not sure why anyone would think that using soft deletion on an actual burn account function would be sensible though.
  - silisili 2y ago
    I get that a little from the company perspective, but it leads to its own issues of perhaps more important magnitude. If you have data for a user, who wants to delete it, you can soft delete to allow recovery to prevent complaints. On the other hand, 5 years from now your system gets hacked, and now you have to email some person you haven't done business with in 5 years to tell them their data that you claimed was deleted was leaked. Sure you can do soft deletions with some hacky actual delete schedule but it doesn't really solve the problem, only reduces the timeline.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      Why not educate the customer? "If you request deletion, do not expect your data back, because it truly will be deleted!". Sad state of world that this has to be said, however. Discord (and many other places) allow you to recover your account within a specific period of time, but they do not delete anything, you just simply lose access and your name gets changed (and avatar and status removed), but all your DMs are there, all your messages are there (although I understand why, especially in servers (guilds)). There is a way to bulk save and delete messages from Discord, however.
      - speff 2y ago
        People in general simply do not read warnings like that. It’s a form of autopilot that everyone utilizes to function/cope in an age where they’re being bombarded with too much information
- nickm12 2y ago
  Says someone who has never experienced a data loss bug.
  - silisili 2y ago
    Was the data really important? Is it worth holding people's data hostage because of subpar developers? I'm not at all saying that soft deletion shouldn't exist. I'm arguing that hard deletion should be the default, and then soft deletion practices should have some justification. Instead the industry chose to just soft delete everywhere, which is good for the industry, and bad for users.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      Soft delete is a sensible default to prevent all sorts of problems. It's almost always good for a human to be able to get into the system and revert things if something bad happened. It should just be followed up by hard delete several days or weeks later. The general policy should never be to hold things indefinitely. As a practical example I have soft deletion for more or less everything on my desktop. There are periodic filesystem level snapshots and those stick around until I manually GC them. It has saved me more than once.
    - nickm12 2y ago
      The industry chose the default of "data that is stored in durable storage is probably important". Sorry, I just don't see how that is bad for users when compared to the alternative default of "data that is stored in durable storage should be irretrievably deleted immediately".
- groestl 2y ago
  Not deleting something you should have: a fine. In some countries. Deleting something you should not have: potentially a business extinction event. And a fine as well.
- timeon 2y ago
  Seems risky to put your data on non-EU servers. It is still risk, but at least there is legal framework.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft_deletion https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft_deletion

silisili 2y ago

It's absurd to me how soft deletion took over the entire industry and 'DELETE FROM' became taboo.

raverbashing 2y ago
Too many fat fingers, too many relations that were not suppose to break (or were supposed to be disjoint but weren't), too much regulatory uncertainty, both for deleting and keeping the data, etc etc
- silisili 2y ago
  The regulatory aspect is one I get. The problem is that it infected the mindset of almost every company. Those that worked at companies who needed it brought the mindset everywhere. And like many technologies, people who study what big companies do mimic it everywhere, even where it's not needed. So your simple stupid SaaS company has some simple object that a user wants to delete that ends up living in a db somewhere... forever.
msie 2y ago
Not really, soft deletion has saved many people's bacon.
- al_borland 2y ago
  That doesn’t mean soft delete should be the only option. With some of our processes, we soft delete for a period of time (2-4 weeks) to account for mistakes. Then, if on one tries to recover it after that time, it does the actual delete. This seems like a reasonable compromise to me. It offers a safety net, while still getting the job done. With as many data breaches as we see these days, I want my data gone. If someone gets a dump of the DB, a delete flag doesn’t matter. This was the primary reason I never got a DNA test, even though I want to see what my results would be. I never trusted the companies to store that data long term. If I could get a test where a company didn’t store the results after they were provided to me, I’d get one tomorrow.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    The AT&T leak was huge. :D There was also a leak in either 23andMe or some other company handling DNAs not too long ago (months, maybe 2 years >.>).
friendzis 2y ago
To `DELETE FROM` you have to have at least a relatively vague idea what you are doing. Go and find an organization that has their data and component dependency maps ready and up to date :) One hard delete can expose months worth of bugs.
- silisili 2y ago
  'Our data design is too bad to allow anyone to delete anything' is not, to me, a valid reason to prevent actual deletion.
  - groestl 2y ago
    Enter Git. (FTR, I don't think it's bad data design. It's a tradeoff. Sometimes it's even a feature.)
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Can't delete from backups, though.
  - friendzis 2y ago
    If you really cannot (although, most probably just burdensome), you can always render the data unreadable. E.g. by destroying the keys.
    - beejiu 2y ago
      Don't forget to backup those keys, though :)
goosejuice 2y ago
For every customer that legitimately wants their data deleted there's a hundred that complain their data is gone after confirming deletion. The same customers that mark your transactional email as spam then complain about not being able to get into their account. Exaggerating here, but I do think soft deletion practices can be partially blamed on real business problems. I'm not sure why anyone would think that using soft deletion on an actual burn account function would be sensible though.
- silisili 2y ago
  I get that a little from the company perspective, but it leads to its own issues of perhaps more important magnitude. If you have data for a user, who wants to delete it, you can soft delete to allow recovery to prevent complaints. On the other hand, 5 years from now your system gets hacked, and now you have to email some person you haven't done business with in 5 years to tell them their data that you claimed was deleted was leaked. Sure you can do soft deletions with some hacky actual delete schedule but it doesn't really solve the problem, only reduces the timeline.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Why not educate the customer? "If you request deletion, do not expect your data back, because it truly will be deleted!". Sad state of world that this has to be said, however. Discord (and many other places) allow you to recover your account within a specific period of time, but they do not delete anything, you just simply lose access and your name gets changed (and avatar and status removed), but all your DMs are there, all your messages are there (although I understand why, especially in servers (guilds)). There is a way to bulk save and delete messages from Discord, however.
    - speff 2y ago
      People in general simply do not read warnings like that. It’s a form of autopilot that everyone utilizes to function/cope in an age where they’re being bombarded with too much information
nickm12 2y ago
Says someone who has never experienced a data loss bug.
- silisili 2y ago
  Was the data really important? Is it worth holding people's data hostage because of subpar developers? I'm not at all saying that soft deletion shouldn't exist. I'm arguing that hard deletion should be the default, and then soft deletion practices should have some justification. Instead the industry chose to just soft delete everywhere, which is good for the industry, and bad for users.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    Soft delete is a sensible default to prevent all sorts of problems. It's almost always good for a human to be able to get into the system and revert things if something bad happened. It should just be followed up by hard delete several days or weeks later. The general policy should never be to hold things indefinitely. As a practical example I have soft deletion for more or less everything on my desktop. There are periodic filesystem level snapshots and those stick around until I manually GC them. It has saved me more than once.
  - nickm12 2y ago
    The industry chose the default of "data that is stored in durable storage is probably important". Sorry, I just don't see how that is bad for users when compared to the alternative default of "data that is stored in durable storage should be irretrievably deleted immediately".
groestl 2y ago
Not deleting something you should have: a fine. In some countries. Deleting something you should not have: potentially a business extinction event. And a fine as well.
timeon 2y ago
Seems risky to put your data on non-EU servers. It is still risk, but at least there is legal framework.