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Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year

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Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year

#201

Post by imgabe »

gilrain wrote: post #51
imgabe wrote: post #48

I don't know how many times this is going to have to happen before people understand this: when you put something online, assume it is essentially public. Forever. If you don't want it to be public forever, don't put it online.

This is victim blaming and only reinforces the status quo. The way things are isn't the way things have to be. We can change the rules if we work together. Or we can give up and blame the victims.

Depending on other people to change their actions when you've been victimized ensures that you'll always remain a victim. You can't control what other people do. You can control what you do.

Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year

#202

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

holidayacct wrote: post #129
kuschku wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've got 30 days to delete data, there's no excuse not to manage it within 30 days. Also, you're saying they intentionally built a software stack without even thinking about how to obey the law (the 30-day deletion requirement existed even before the GDPR, since 1996 even, just with lower fines) I hope in a few years this case will be taught in school just like the Therac case is being taught right now.

It's not that simple, some of these companies have tech stacks that are run-a-way trains written by people who had good intentions but wrote their code and built their infrastructure in a way that was meant for 1/50th of the traffic they currently have. I don't know anything about instagram's infrastructure but what I can tell you for certain is that every one of these companies has legacy infrastructure and code tha…

Then they have to stop adding new features, and focus their countless developers on implementing a way to meet these legal requirements.

And the fines for not doing that need to be big enough to motivate them to do that.

Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year

#203

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

holidayacct wrote: post #116

Whenever someone publishes an article like this, I want them to find out what its like when you reach the threshold of 100000 individual delete requests per second which ends up being five million actual deletes when you factor in all of the associated references to the item being deleted and its metadata. Then I want them to find out what happens when you have to propagate those deletes across geographically distrib…

Just because it's hard doesn't make it optional. If you operate at the scale of Instagram, yes, it becomes very hard, but the companies typically have both the revenues and expert staffing to do it.

And if they don't, they're mismanaged and need to allocate more resources to it, because it's illegal not to, for good reason.

Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year

#204

Post by holidayacct »

s1t5 wrote: post #133
holidayacct wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple, some of these companies have tech stacks that are run-a-way trains written by people who had good intentions but wrote their code and built their infrastructure in a way that was meant for 1/50th of the traffic they currently have. I don't know anything about instagram's infrastructure but what I can tell you for certain is that every one of these companies has legacy infrastructure and code tha…

> I don't know anything about instagram's infrastructure but what I can tell you for certain is that every one of these companies has legacy infrastructure So you don't know anything about Instagram but at the same time know for certain that they have legacy infrastructure that keeps them from meeting legal requirements? How about we don't give them a pass just because it requires a bit of work to comply with laws an…

Maybe its just me but I have yet to work for a company that didnt have legacy infrastructure that was hold them back in some way. Even the startups I've worked for had to make odd business decisions in order to take on new customers. Those odd one-offs and business decisions eventually led to sprawling legacy infrastructure. If there is an infrastructure Utopia I have yet to work there or hear of it.

Re: Instagram kept deleted photos and messages on its servers for more than a year

#205

Post by colejohnson66 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #159
mtnGoat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say a system that can't effectively delete also scales poorly. No?

It depends on the definition of “delete”. Removing a record from a data model scales just fine, and is how it has always been defined in database systems. Making that record physically unrecoverable from any hardware in the broader system is extraordinarily expensive for fundamental technical reasons. Traditionally “delete” has always meant the former in all systems, and physical deletion is deferred to a point in th…

You’re right. Maybe the technical definition means altering a record to say DELETE=TRUE, but the widely used definition means unrecoverable, and that’s what matters.
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