There is nothing I've come across, ever, that has lead me to believe that Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., ever delete anything, ever. Not even to clean up space as some people on this thread are suggesting. Hard drive space is cheap and data is valuable. This isn't a secret, this is a fairly obvious business practice that all the big players, and most competent small players, are engaging in.
FWIW, Facebook does say that they will delete all of your data within 90 days of account deletion. I believe that indicates that they've put the engineering effort to do a full audit of data to be deleted, handle missing references across the product, and to fully delete user data from logs and backups.
> When you delete your account, people won't be able to see it on Facebook. It may
take up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates or other data stored in backup systems.
The case from the article is trickier. My impression is the feature was just implemented with an append-only data model, which is often (maybe usually) a good engineering decision. "Secretly" from the article title feels disingenuous because Facebook never said it was deleted. As an engineer, it's frustrating that I might have to write my software to be more fragile to match the implicit expectations of how a non-technical user thinks software should work. But the frustration on the user's end is also plenty understandable here. Hopefully the gap can be closed a little on both sides by a combination of educating users and being more privacy-conscious in engineering and business decisions.
Do you think it's as easy as "rm"-ing a file away? Your data is kept internally in a multitude of different databases. Parts of it sitting in cold storage. Log files, caches. That data is split across thousands of different nodes. Each system has different data retention policies. Some databases don't permit removal of a specific record - the records must "expire" first. It really does take time to delete data.
True, but this isn't an excuse. It's slow to delete data because Facebook designed it that way. They could have designed for privacy and real-time deletion of data, but they didn't, because they didn't care.
> "They could have designed for privacy and real-time deletion of data"
Actually, they could not. If data is geo-replicated across multiple clusters, spread all over the place, divided into hot and cold storage layers - it's crystal clear you can't perform "real time deletion of data". Instantaneous deletion of all data, leaving no trace behind, can not happen under such complex constraints.
>> > "They could have designed for privacy and real-time deletion of data"
> Actually, they could not. If data is geo-replicated across multiple clusters, spread all over the place, divided into hot and cold storage layers - it's crystal clear you can't perform "real time deletion of data". Instantaneous deletion of all data, leaving no trace behind, can not happen under such complex constraints.
Yes, they could have. Your post is just a description of a design that can't delete data quickly. That doesn't prove that no design exists which can delete data quickly.
If Facebook had been designed with "we need to allow users to delete their data quickly and permanently" as a constraint from the beginning, it wouldn't look like the system you've described.
All you've done is pick all the things that Facebook did and say that if you do those things you can't delete data quickly. Yes, that's true--which is why Facebook would not have done those things if they cared about allowing users to delete their data.
It's interesting that you think they need those 90 days to off load your data. As if they hadn't done so before your deletion.
By the way, rm does work like that. The file will just be marked as deleted (by removing its entry from the filesystem index), but will remain on your disk for some time afterwards, from some minutes to months. If you want to ensure deletion, you should be using shred.
> By the way, rm does work like that. The file will just be marked as deleted (by removing its entry from the filesystem index), but will remain on your disk for some time afterwards, from some minutes to months. If you want to ensure deletion, you should be using shred.
This is true, but it's worth noting that not overwriting your own data on a machine you physically own as an optimization is very different behavior from not overwriting someone else's data on your server when they request that you delete it.
There's nothing there which clarifies that "delete" isn't a euphemism for "flag it to no longer be displayed to users" like it is everywhere else where companies collect data on users, so you'll excuse my skepticism.
"Well when talking about deleting we mean we do the exact same thing the file system does to a file, it flags it, but doesn't actually erase it's content. Acting like a filesystem delete operation is what people expect when using that word"
That would be somewhat reasonable if it were just an implementation detail. But unfortunately, it's not just an implementation detail. When a filesystem has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, it overwrites the data which was flagged for deletion. But when a web 2.0 company has data to write and runs out of hard drive space, they buy more hard drive space, usually automatically.
Clearly there is a big disconnect here. It seems somebody is suggesting there should be a correlation between a user removing content from their account and Facebook destroying some of Facebook property.
Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook. Users have no business telling Facebook to destroy Facebook property.
It also says you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License).
In short Facebook can do anything they want with the IP content you provide to them. It also identifies, by example, IP content as media you provide to them. For that material the policy is pretty clear, but what about other material? What about textual content that is typed into Facebook and identified relationships? It seems this information is covered by the same policies and is IP subject to Facebook's use.
My understanding of Facebook policy is also likely dated as their terms change periodically. The current policy is dated at 30 January 2015.
If you read a bit further, it says the license ends when you and the other users with whom you have shared the content delete it, which was the case we were discussing.
Users didn't accept anything just because they checked a checkbox next to a link to an ever-changing jumble of legalese to get past a screen. This isn't agreement, it's manufactured consent.
Unfortunately no matter how many times you say this or how much you wish it were true, US (at least) courts have disagreed with you by enforcing contracts of adhesion.
I think we're in agreement, we're just saying things slightly differently. I believe human rights exist and are an ethical imperative whether or not lawmakers/courts choose to protect human rights.
Or put another way, the law should be (but often isn't) informed by human rights--human rights aren't informed by the law.
That's like saying having to pay for any product is extortion, just because it's something you want but don't want the consequences of that, in that case paying for it.
Facebook's terms of services agreement that you must consent to in order to open or maintain your account. These are the rules not because Facebook says so, but because you say so when you agree to their terms.
Let's be clear here: I'm not the Facebook user in question. I've never uploaded a video to Facebook and never will.
Users didn't sign or agree to anything just because they checked a checkbox next to a link to an ever-changing jumble of legalese to get past a screen. This isn't agreement, it's manufactured consent.
> Users didn't sign or agree to anything just because they checked a checkbox next to a link to an ever-changing jumble of legalese to get past a screen. This isn't agreement, it's manufactured consent.
What is the difference? I am thinking if a person really actually cared they would have read the legal agreement before checking the checkbox in question and possibly consulted an attorney of their own. I am thinking most users absolutely do not care and agree out-right and immediately to all claims presented by Facebook. How is that not still agreement?
You can't claim users don't care about their videos not being deleted--the fact that they do care is exactly why this is in the news. They may click past a screen because they think that they don't care, but that's only because they don't understand the implications of doing so. Part of the reason is that a lot of people naively believe that a respectable company like Facebook wouldn't try to screw them over, and would behave with their best interests in mind.
It's unrealistic to expect that users will read AND understand the TOS of every website AND all of the changes to the TOS that occur over time.
There is nothing I've come across, ever, that has lead me to believe that Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., ever delete anything, ever. Not even to clean up space as some people on this thread are suggesting. Hard drive space is cheap and data is valuable. This isn't a secret, this is a fairly obvious business practice that all the big players, and most competent small players, are engaging in.