Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

Even if both parties delete it the message is probably not actually deleted, it's Facebook after all.

I thought this was a good question and went to try and find out. I grabbed the old source from https://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar and started grepping around, but couldn't find any function to delete comments (only links, which do delete, but don't get purged from the cache it seems). I didn't set up Arc to try and run the thing though.

If anyone has more knowledge, or understands the source better, or has newer code, I'd be interested to know.

I would assume he has an admin type of account on Facebook, but does that even matter tho. He and many other employees have direct access to their databases and code. They can do whatever they want and there do not seem to be any checks in place to prevent crime/abuse.

If some engineer at Facebook wants to log into the account of someone they have a crush on, search for nudes or something else nefarious, I have yet to learn of any systems in place to prevent that from happening besides Facebook telling us to trust them.

They used to have a master password to log into any account[1]. They say they replaced this with a special tool you need "permission" to use.

Quote from the article "Finally, while the interviewee says the ‘master password’ has been deprecated, employees can still access your profile through a special tool, but they need to provide a reason for why they’re doing it. If they get audited down the line and fail to provide an explanation, they can be fired"

That sounds like a system where you trust everyone and audit later to verify nothing bad happened. Imo these systems are put in place to hide abuse not reveal it because they are reactionary instead of preventative.

That entire system of checking employees from abusing data, relies of everyone trusting the people in charge at Facebook to do the right thing, insert "dumb fucks" Zuckerberg quote here[2].

Imo it is a matter of time before we find out about wide scale massive data abuse from Facebook employees. Either an insider feeding out data to others or someone on the inside listening to hedge fund managers private conversations to insider trade off of.

I am just generally tired of everyone trusting everyone all the time. We have to have rules and systems in place to eliminate the need for trust.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/rumpus-facebook-privacy/ [2] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes

It's moot if there's anyone or service doing backups of HN, whether for archiving purposes or other. I know Reddit has a few services doing that for threads -- which recently lead to evidence on /r/legaladvice that can be used against an employer as both the employer and employee posted separately, the manager essentially stating that they wanted to fire the employee in retaliation and for not participating (regardless of their cultural/religious practices, and having been told so prior to continued violations).

Unfortunately we don't have government organizations that help with moderating discussion (like a therapist would), such as a parent would help children learn how to communicate with others in difficult situations, to deal with emotions, etc; and if bad behaviour, giving someone time-out until they can "play nice" again.

We have to of course make an environment good enough, rewarding enough to be part of, that it's an incentive for everyone to want to play nice.

Perhaps we need to come up with a new system (separate from legal system, or part of justice-education system) for dealing with situations that teach compassion when compassion/understanding is missing, e.g. should bullying a crime, or who should we leave that up to - is it even required to bring all participants related to bullying together, parents of the perpetrator and the victim, and create a healing circle to uncover the deeper underlying issues?

The whole point would be to rally support, so we can build stronger, deep community - and society could, like with criminal law, have fines or other limitations created if people decide to opt-out of this system.

We really need to become more comfortable with accountability, that our actions have consequences - though we also must support a practice of learning, mistakes happen during learning, etc; there's pretending to have learned, and genuine change/evolution in a person's thinking and behaviour, difficult to perhaps tell in some cases online.