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DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

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Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#221

Post by Fnoord »

nerdponx wrote: post #188
ngcc_hk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. If it is deep learning do not know any way to get from weights back to data.

You can't un-train the model. Your contribution has already been made.

Either

#1 You can train the model continously

#2 the model stops learning

#3 it has a submodel which detects you are feeding it false data.

Given that people change over time, #2 seems unlikely. The question to me is "how advanced is #3?". Another thing I wonder about is how relative are these to eaxh other. At odds?

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#222

Post by throwaway_tech7 »

saddlerustle wrote: post #109
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

I don't trust the "delete" button to scrub it from FB's database. I'd be slightly more confident ( slightly ) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated, however. In which case, I think the more effective script would be one that goes through all of your FB posts and scrambles them, or replaces the text with gibberish.

Lots of people in this thread are claiming that it doesn't based on gut feeling, but consider: - Facebook publicly claims it does [1] - Mark Zuckerberg testified in-front of congress and stated they do [2] - Multiple government regulators have specifically checked that it does in their privacy audits. [3] They might be lying and actively conspiring to not delete it, but they'd have to have a very good reason to take…

Pretty much exactly this, but also:

I work at a company you've heard of, and you've probably (P > .5) used at least one of our products. We're international (including EU). I personally wrote our user data deletion logic for GDPR compliance.

We delete all of your PII. It doesn't matter if you're from the EU or not, because it's too expensive to figure it out and too risky because you're going to miss some weird edge case - Legal doesn't have much of a sense of humor when it comes to wiggle room.

My experience has been that larger organizations consistently spend more effort (relative to size) to genuinely comply with privacy regulations than smaller ones. The risk:reward ratio for deliberately ignoring or subverting privacy regulations is insanely bad. There are too many surfaces along which that would leak out, and the gains would be pretty marginal. Pretty much anyone who works at a large tech company can and will confirm that this is the case (see Jeff Kaufman's posts on this thread). There is no conspiracy between the six-digit number of engineers who work at these companies to keep quiet about it.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#223

Post by [deleted] »

IanCal wrote: post #211
cyphar wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He lied to the FBI after a plea bargain which involved him telling them the truth. From memory, this all happened before his Congress testimony but it's definitely not related. It is illegal to lie to Congress (unrelated to whether you're under oath or not), but I can think of very few examples where there were real ramifications for it.

> He lied to the FBI after a plea bargain which involved him telling them the truth. Sure you're not thinking of Manafort? I don't think Cohen had a plea deal, and I don't think he was charged with lying to the FBI. Manafort and Flynn did, and Manafort I think was the one that then broke the deal. There's a lot of crimes to keep track of. I guess it depends on what you mean by real ramifications as it's being served…

[deleted]

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#224

Post by lambada »

IanCal wrote: post #211
cyphar wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He lied to the FBI after a plea bargain which involved him telling them the truth. From memory, this all happened before his Congress testimony but it's definitely not related. It is illegal to lie to Congress (unrelated to whether you're under oath or not), but I can think of very few examples where there were real ramifications for it.

> He lied to the FBI after a plea bargain which involved him telling them the truth. Sure you're not thinking of Manafort? I don't think Cohen had a plea deal, and I don't think he was charged with lying to the FBI. Manafort and Flynn did, and Manafort I think was the one that then broke the deal. There's a lot of crimes to keep track of. I guess it depends on what you mean by real ramifications as it's being served…

Yep, that looks right from his Wikipedia article. One count of making false statements to a congressional committee. It’s not immediately obvious to me when he was charged/convicted of that though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cohen_(lawyer)

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#225

Post by dx034 »

laumars wrote: post #216
saddlerustle wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people in this thread are claiming that it doesn't based on gut feeling, but consider: - Facebook publicly claims it does [1] - Mark Zuckerberg testified in-front of congress and stated they do [2] - Multiple government regulators have specifically checked that it does in their privacy audits. [3] They might be lying and actively conspiring to not delete it, but they'd have to have a very good reason to take…

Maybe not lie per se but they might have multiple data stores, one for the "social media" side of things and an archive for machine learning, one for targeted ads, etc. So they could legitimately say "we delete your data [from the perspective of social media]" while still having an archive for their other business units. It wouldn't be the first time Facebook (nor any other business that profits from people's data) h…

Under GDPR, you cannot tell users you deleted data if it's still available for other purposes (except for legal requirements like invoices).

Given FB's size and the small amount of people deleting data, I doubt Facebook would take the risk to keep a few more datasets.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#226

Post by dx034 »

IanCal wrote: post #195
skinnymuch wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that all to sell you ads?

For the general "you" yes, but not the specific "you". It would be possible to use your data to sell someone else ads.

But they don't? They use data internally to improve ad revenue but I doubt they ever sold data for money or intend to do so.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#227

Post by dx034 »

hu3 wrote: post #74
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

I don't trust the "delete" button to scrub it from FB's database. I'd be slightly more confident ( slightly ) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated, however. In which case, I think the more effective script would be one that goes through all of your FB posts and scrambles them, or replaces the text with gibberish.

I think FB goes to great lenghts to never erase data. Including using Blue-ray discs to store stale data: https://datacenterfrontier.com/inside-facebooks-blu-ray-cold...

Basically tape backups but with a different medium. I'd be surprised if they didn't have any offline backups.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#228

Post by dx034 »

monocasa wrote: post #65
ForHackernews wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever is a very very long time indeed. Facebook will go out of business or get sold eventually and delete it all to save money or by accident. See also: Myspace accidentally dumping everything pre-2015 https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/18/myspace-lost-12-years-mu...

For similar reasons, I doubt very much that they actually deleted everything they said they did. I know that they were backing up to tape and storing it at Iron Mountain years prior.

But someone has to pay that bill. If Facebook ever fails, I doubt that someone would keep data centers full of information around without getting paid.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#229

Post by VvR-Ox »

saddlerustle wrote: post #109
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

I don't trust the "delete" button to scrub it from FB's database. I'd be slightly more confident ( slightly ) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated, however. In which case, I think the more effective script would be one that goes through all of your FB posts and scrambles them, or replaces the text with gibberish.

Lots of people in this thread are claiming that it doesn't based on gut feeling, but consider: - Facebook publicly claims it does [1] - Mark Zuckerberg testified in-front of congress and stated they do [2] - Multiple government regulators have specifically checked that it does in their privacy audits. [3] They might be lying and actively conspiring to not delete it, but they'd have to have a very good reason to take…

> Facebook publicly claims it does Hahahahaha YMMD!

> Mark Zuckerberg testified in-front of congress and stated they do He would tell us everything that helps him as he is an opportunist

> Multiple government regulators have specifically checked that it does in their privacy audits You're talking about the governments secretly spying on us and lying about that since decades? Ouch.

There is no legal risk for those who observe if you abide the laws.

> A infinitesimal fraction of facebook users try to delete anything What does that tell you about the majority of ppl?

> Facebook makes money from your data by showing you ads. If you stop using facebook, you stop generating any revenue and your data becomes a liability, not an asset. That's just what you think you know. What about psychological profiling, law enforcement etc.?

Also did you hear about the "shadow profiles" about users who don't have an account? The moment you're surfing into their net (as we know even through embedded like buttons etc.) you'll be milked like a dairy cow.

> What reason would there be to lie about it? What reason is there not to be honest about it? The recent events have shown very clearly that they don't have to fear much.

Re: DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts

#230

Post by moccachino »

cyphar wrote: post #204
irjustin wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Testifying in Congress absolutely carries legal ramifications. It's just pretty hard to pin it so I agree with the "difficult" sentiment. https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/is-zuckerberg-under-oath-c... John M Poindexter was one who was convicted of lying to Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poindexter#U.S._executive...

I agree that it is technically illegal, but if the most recent example of a conviction (that you can think of) was almost 30 years ago that tells you that it's effectively unenforced.

Michael Cohen was sentenced for exactly this [1] just a few months ago.

[1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/12/13/michael-c...

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