Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#231

Post by ehsankia » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 5:21 AM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #223

ori_b wrote: post #173

You mean they follow what many people consider best practices? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1592... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/820466/never-delete-entr... https://serverfault.com/questions/31455/should-i-ever-delete... https://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Do-Not-Delete-Data http://udidahan.com/2009/09/01/dont-delete-just-dont/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2549839/are-soft-dele…

Disclaimer: I deleted my Facebook account a couple years ago and never looked back. That said, Facebook is who is just getting collectively stabbed with the pitchfork right now. Engineering best practices are one thing. My right to privacy is another. As an engineer I care about efficiency. As a human I care about privacy. My rights win over any technocratic babble. Sorry if I am being harsh. I am, of course not surp…

I agree that you have the right to privacy, but there's also technical reasons why instant deletion is not always possible. If they can guarantee that the data will be gone after X days, then that's fair to me.

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#232

Post by brentm » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #173

You mean they follow what many people consider best practices? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1592... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/820466/never-delete-entr... https://serverfault.com/questions/31455/should-i-ever-delete... https://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Do-Not-Delete-Data http://udidahan.com/2009/09/01/dont-delete-just-dont/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2549839/are-soft-dele…

Privacy hawks are always looking for a reason to complain about Facebook and scream I told you so.

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#233

Post by samstave » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 5:35 AM UTC

WovenTales wrote: post #33

The most unsettling part is in Facebook's response: “We’ve heard that when accessing their information from our Download Your Information tool, some people are seeing their old videos that do not appear on their profile or Activity Log. We are investigating.” Who wants to bet against their investigation being “how to keep users from seeing it.” Anyone?

Apparently the walls on the garden weren’t high enough - and the sappers are the real culprits!!

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#234

Post by bduerst » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 5:41 AM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #64

narrator wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always tell people to treat Facebook as if every person you ever meet will be able to see it. It's more or less my public persona. Twitter is more anonymous.

Unless it's encrypted and ephemeral, treat every bit sent out to the internet, a public network, as your public persona.

Yep, another way of looking at it is if it leaves your device, assume the information is eventually open to the public.

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#235

Post by ReverseCold » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 5:51 AM UTC

pennaMan wrote: post #94

guessmyname wrote: post #8

This reminds me of the long conversations that I used to have with family members and friends several years ago. With their continuous requests to create my own Facebook profile so I can keep in contact with them and with their activities as well as to share my whereabouts. I always used the same argument to reject these suggestions — "I don't want Facebook to have too much data about me, more than the data that you…

>Unfortunately, expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the Internet Explain how data can be unreadable while it moves. Teach them to use secure communication options. You don't need to be an electric engineer to use a TV remote control.

But no one has made a TV Remote control version of "encrypted Facebook" or even "encrypted eMail".

And heck, there are people who can't use tv remote controls.

The only thing that I'd consider "easy" is encrypted chat (signal). The "issue" there is market fragmentation (arguably a good thing).

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#236

Post by didibus » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 5:53 AM UTC

guessmyname wrote: post #8

This reminds me of the long conversations that I used to have with family members and friends several years ago. With their continuous requests to create my own Facebook profile so I can keep in contact with them and with their activities as well as to share my whereabouts. I always used the same argument to reject these suggestions — "I don't want Facebook to have too much data about me, more than the data that you…

> It is sad how this information becomes news only when bad things happen.

What bad things? I feel that's the part missing from the argument. People have yet to see or hear what are the negative consequences of all that data being kept or even leaked or re-sold.

The only one they've started to know about is the potential impact on elections, which is pretty hypothetical and weak to most people I feel. Or maybe identity theft, but that's more related to the Equifax leak.

I think its important to rationalise on what are the real consequences of our data no longer being private. Is it really dangerous? What's the worse that could happen? What are the chances of it happening, etc.

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#237

Post by TomV1971 » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 5:55 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #217

raverbashing wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, like a filesystem more or less I might just "help" them by uploading more data I guess

File systems eventually overwrite that data, though. FB's system specifically never reclaims it. Why on earth would you ever do that, unless you have absolutely no respect for your users wishes?

I assume that there might be technical reasons to do it that way.

For example: a soft delete may be just a stronger version of public vs private settings. The whole software infrastructure still assumes a link exists and doesn’t need to cover cases where it really isn’t there. I could see how that makes maintaining indexes etc easier.

Flipping a flag and then filtering out results down the line based on the delete setting is probably much easier than actively removing them from an index.

And if deleting is rare (it probably is), then the performance and resource impact should be minimal.

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#238

Post by WA » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 6:04 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #173

You mean they follow what many people consider best practices? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1592... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/820466/never-delete-entr... https://serverfault.com/questions/31455/should-i-ever-delete... https://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Do-Not-Delete-Data http://udidahan.com/2009/09/01/dont-delete-just-dont/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2549839/are-soft-dele…

Does this make it right, because others are doing it? I’d say it depends heavily on the type of data and the user expectation.

The correct thing would be to flag as deleted for a sensible period of time (to be able to undo for the user) and then get rid of it after X days when it clearly isn’t needed anymore.

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#239

Post by donatj » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 6:15 AM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #229

benwilber0 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. At Facebook-scale the data is massive -- far bigger than anyone here could possibly comprehend and that includes the Facebook and Google-ers lurking around. Data has incredible inertia. And when there's a lot of it, in a lot of different places, I can imagine that it becomes very difficult to keep track of. I'm glad that Facebook's data export tool included some things that maybe it didn't expect to…

If it’s too hard to do properly maybe they shouldn’t be doing it /shrug

Don’t allow users to delete things?

Re: Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted

#240

Post by donatj » Sun, Apr 01, 2018, 6:20 AM UTC

What I think so many privacy advocates don’t realize while frothing at the mouth is that odds are 99.9999% no one really wants your old photos or data specifically. Surely in large aggregate, but on a macro level you are no more interesting than anyone else. You’re not. You have a delusion of grandeur.

Sure, you might get some targeted ads by data used in aggregate and put you into a group but so what? If I had to see ads, I’d rather them be things I am interested in.