[HN Gopher] Facebook's 'Clear History' Tool Doesn't Clear Shit (...
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Facebook's 'Clear History' Tool Doesn't Clear Shit (2020)
Author : decrypt
Score : 270 points
Date : 2021-04-12 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This is the main point the article is making:
|
| > The only thing you're clearing is a connection Facebook made
| between its data and the data it gets from third parties, not the
| data itself.
|
| However this is not the main privacy issue with Facebook in my
| opinion. Even if Facebook users could legitimately clear their
| third party data entirely, they still can't easily clear their
| own first party data (posts, photos, searches, likes, Instagram
| activity, etc). Right now, you have to go click "delete" in your
| activity log one-by-one on individual posts. This is so time
| consuming and manual that most users will never do it - which is
| of course by design.
|
| There is a plugin that helped users delete their Facebook content
| (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-
| post-m...), by letting you select the time period and type of
| content you want to delete. However, Facebook repeatedly breaks
| it by changing the page design for seemingly no real reason. The
| cat and mouse updates worked for a while but this extension has
| not been updated since 2019. Some creative people then built a
| second extension that switches Facebook to an older layout
| (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/switch-to-classic-...)
| and this allowed the above history clearing extension to work.
| But then Facebook made an even more drastic redesign of the
| Activity Log, which broke this approach of using a second
| extension in conjunction with the first.
|
| Can any enterprising HN code ninja help solve this problem? I
| think we need a suite of tools to help users easily clear their
| history from all social media platform, whether it is Facebook,
| Twitter, Instagram, or whatever. Ideally we'd have a law
| requiring such controls be provided to users but I'm not holding
| my breath.
| passivate wrote:
| Can Facebook legitimately pivot into any other service/product
| and still make money? It seems like they're always going to be at
| odds with privacy/public trust.
|
| One one hand, it is extremely sad to see talented engineers at
| Google/FB work hard on products designed to spy on people, but
| OTOH, I suppose it could be far worse if these were companies who
| simply sold our data.
| theropost wrote:
| Quite true, it is their business model. There are so many
| talented engineers using their great talent on ways to gather
| advertising data. I wonder what will happen when their business
| model is no longer viable? Do they then begin the pivot of
| selling our data to anyone?
| cglong wrote:
| The Facebook Portal seemed like an attempt to make a product
| less dependent on ad revenue; unfortunately, the fundamental
| nature of it made people really distrustful of it. This is also
| why I'm closely watching what they do with Oculus.
| awestley wrote:
| Would it be worse? A big part of what companies like FB and
| Google do is get people "hooked" (A good book on this very
| topic) on sharing that data. In effect willingly revealing more
| and more data about themselves. If it were simply being sold I
| don't think people would divulge as much information.
| rcoveson wrote:
| Agreed. If entity A makes billions of dollars by selling
| everything they know about you, and entity B makes billions
| of dollars by merely _knowing_ everything they know about
| you, I much prefer entity A. Entity B and its investors
| terrify me with the confidence they have in the future
| returns on that knowledge.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| So you'd rather me be able to purchase information about
| everything you've done, down to your gps location from five
| minutes ago? Even "anonymized" data is trivially easy to
| de-anonymize with publicly available information. It makes
| me shudder to think how many apps (like weather channel)
| are on everyone's phones that allow companies to sell your
| current location to the highest bidder. It's shockingly
| pervasive.
| rcoveson wrote:
| If you can purchase it then so can I, so yes, I would
| absolutely prefer that. Better than Facebook building up
| a totally _proprietary_ information hoard. If Facebook
| knows it, I consider it lost anyway.
| stevehawk wrote:
| as a ~40yr old it feels like the greatest disappointment of my
| generation is that most of our brain power went towards making
| better spyware, click tracking, etc, all in the name of
| maximizing ad revenue and click through.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Went from designing stupid stuff like cheap audio IC's which
| meant any teenager with a part time job could afford a
| bitchin stereo. To designing cool stuff like a wiget that
| disables a single mother's car when she's a day late on her
| car payment!!!
| exporectomy wrote:
| You say that car thing like it's bad. Instant enforcement
| of debt is good for both the lender and borrower. It stops
| people getting trapped deeper and deeper in debt. A lot
| like pre-pay phone/power/etc. Your life isn't ruined
| because you stopped paying, just inconvenienced for a few
| days.
| passivate wrote:
| I think there are several parallels in other industries -
| financial, pharma, etc. Very smart people, working on
| products that are (on some axis) detrimental to our society
| (or at-least one vision of what a society should look like).
| Jaygles wrote:
| If someone decided to meticulously track everything I do. Follow
| me wherever I went. Put a GPS tracker on my car to see everywhere
| I visit. Peep inside my windows to see what websites I browse.
| Look over my shoulder at the grocery store to see what items I
| buy. I would consider that stalking and attempt to file a
| restraining order against that person.
|
| Can I file a restraining order against Facebook? Or Google?
| rcoveson wrote:
| You can't, because all the websites they're tracking you on are
| actually helping Facebook by choice. They didn't plant a GPS
| tracker on your car, they paid a bunch of amoral civilians to
| monitor your movements through the city.
|
| Our legal system isn't equipped to handle the majority of free
| people deciding to act like broad-spectrum stalkers within the
| span of a few years. Society only works if most people aren't
| evil or utterly susceptible to evil influence.
| adamdusty wrote:
| They didn't plant a GPS tracker, you bought it and use it for
| navigation, messaging, and social media.
| marketingtech wrote:
| That's an interesting question, but it doesn't accurately
| describe the collection/transfer of data as far as FB or Google
| are concerned.
|
| Millions of websites/apps/stores willingly deliver this
| information to Facebook/Google for free, and it's your
| relationship with each of those websites/apps/stores that
| governs the collection and sharing of that data.
|
| GDPR, for instance, makes a distinction between "data
| controllers" and "data processors." The businesses are the
| controllers, and FB/Google are processors. Both have
| responsibilities regarding the handling of your data, but most
| of the requirements fall on the controller. The processors are
| able to assume that the controller had the right to share the
| data with them.
| gundisclosed wrote:
| I guess no, because you agreed to terms and conditions that
| they can.
| 0134340 wrote:
| Terms and conditions which would have a hard time holding up
| in court without a signature and witness. Maybe things will
| change in the future since my own bank does this for online
| agreements as well as a few government agencies but those do
| have more stringent KYC rules for online verification.
| croes wrote:
| They track you even without an account, so no not everyone
| agreed to their terms and conditions.
| dspillett wrote:
| For those who have signed up. What about "shadow profiles"?
| aierou wrote:
| It seems that the term "shadow profile" refers to a feature
| where Facebook retains contact information uploaded by
| other users in order to recommend them as friends if/when
| you create a profile [1]. For all the fear associated with
| the term, that's pretty benign. Is there any evidence for a
| link between these "profiles" and some of the more
| egregious claims of privacy infringement?
|
| [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-
| profiles...
| bicepjai wrote:
| How about if one deleted the account with them 5 years before
| and they still follow you. I hope that is stalking.
| gundisclosed wrote:
| "When you delete content, it's no longer visible to other
| users; however, it may continue to exist elsewhere on our
| systems"
|
| This is from FB's terms and conditions, so I guess they can
| still keep the data.
|
| If you agree to any other website's terms and conditions
| saying "any third party can track you", you have again
| given permission.
| bobthechef wrote:
| The problem with this interpretation is that valid
| contracts depend, among other things, on informed consent
| and on the legality of what's being required, meaning you
| can't trick someone into being bound to terms they never
| really accepted or sufficiently understood and you can't
| bind them to illegal terms.
|
| In this case, most people haven't read the Facebook terms
| of service and it is probably unreasonable to expect
| everyone to not only read them, but to keep abreast of
| any updates. So it's a grey area. And if you pass laws
| and regulations around data privacy, then FB won't be
| able to legally impose such conditions. But as I said
| earlier, there isn't much inertia behind data privacy.
| Nobody with power wants it.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > valid contracts depend, among other things, on informed
| consent and on the legality of what's being required
|
| Yes, and they also depends on power dynamics.
|
| That's why there are a lot of restrictions on what can be
| written in a contract between public utilities and users.
| An electricity provider could strong-arm users into
| signing draconian contracts otherwise.
|
| Social networks have the same negative externalities: if
| most of your friends move from using emails to using
| Facebook to communicate and you are not on it your life
| gets provably worse. You are cut out from a lot of your
| social circle.
|
| Having walled-garden social networks is anti-competitive
| by design.
|
| Unfortunately legislators turn a blind eye to this.
| gundisclosed wrote:
| "most people haven't read the Facebook terms of service
| and it is probably unreasonable to expect everyone to not
| only read them"
|
| I completely disagree with this thought process. If a
| website is asking your birthday, every like / dislike ,
| every detail about relatives and is able to predict if
| you like someone even before you do .. you better know
| how they will use all this data.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Strictly speaking you're correct, but you're describing
| the _should_ rather than the _is_. There are too many
| overly-long ToSes written in arcane legalese to do
| mundane things like use a website or play a game for the
| average person to comprehend even the fist time for
| everything they use, let alone keeping up with the
| changes and their implications.
|
| To coin a meme: "Ain't nobody got time for that"
| 0134340 wrote:
| >Nobody with power wants it.
|
| Or is too influenced by big technopoly lobbying dollars.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| On the other hand consent given once does not imply
| giving consent forever.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I would agree. If you cease use and end the agreement then
| they should stop. If they continue then they should be
| liable.
| r00fus wrote:
| No, because of a 1996 US Federal law, information collected
| about you is no longer your property, even if there is no
| business relationship.
| skybrian wrote:
| When was it ever? Anyone could write an article about you.
| Articles about specific people are discussed all the time on
| Hacker News. Usually the person being written about doesn't
| get a say about their reputation.
| samatman wrote:
| Sadly, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment, from my
| utterly amateur legal armchair.
|
| We need new laws for this. GDPR is a good start, if one
| happens to be an EU citizen, if a bit toothless.
|
| We need new laws because automated collection of vast
| amounts of personal data, at scale, is a thing different in
| kind from manually collecting personal data about a
| specific person. Due to the expense and difficulty, the
| earlier system would tend to scale broadly with someone's
| fame, or at least wealth, which matches our expectations:
| it's not surprising that, say, a gossip magazine would have
| a fat file on Leonardo DiCaprio, and we figure he has
| lawyers on hand to deal with any consequent fallout.
|
| In fact, we all used to be quite grateful for the unsung
| laborers who would collect and publish a doxxing book,
| called the white pages, which would list the names, phone
| numbers, and addresses, of most local people. Of course
| they were legally obligated to unlist those who requested
| it...
| alexvoda wrote:
| > We need new laws for this. GDPR is a good start, if one
| happens to be an EU citizen, if a bit toothless.
|
| It actually has a better bite than most. The problem is
| that the one suposed to do the biting doesn't do a lot of
| it.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| The common law arguably put the question you ask in the
| hands of a jury.[1] It is public figures whose lives are
| fodder for public consumption; more generous privacy rules
| traditionally have applied for the more mediocre among us.
|
| [1] https://law.jrank.org/pages/9409/Privacy-Common-
| Law.html
| devenblake wrote:
| What law specifically?
| ssalka wrote:
| On the off-chance that the parent's description has a typo,
| it may be this 1976 court ruling:
|
| United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435
| [deleted]
| tyingq wrote:
| I would guess the "Telecommunications Act of 1996".
|
| https://transition.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.txt
|
| Probably the text starting here: SEC. 702.
| PRIVACY OF CUSTOMER INFORMATION. Title II is amended
| by inserting after section 221 (47 U.S.C. 221) the
| following new section: SEC. 222. PRIVACY OF CUSTOMER
| INFORMATION
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| If it is about customer (!) information, does it still
| apply to people simply visiting websites, and due to not
| knowing better, not blocking Google and FB trackers? It
| would not seem like they are automatically Google's or
| FB's customers.
| Rygian wrote:
| If you're a European citizen, then you can invoke your legal
| right to erasure.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| It's not a silver bullet of course. Discord, for instance,
| just 'anonymises' message history by renaming your account to
| Deleted User. But most people's message history is enough to
| deanonymise them, making that completely null and void. If
| you ask for your messages to actually be deleted they will
| refuse your request.
|
| I published a tool on GitHub for deleting message history in
| the most efficient way I could find. Yet users of the tool
| sometimes get their accounts banned because Discord's TOS
| prohibits unauthorised use of their API. I speculate this is
| because they don't want custom clients which don't send back
| telemetry.
|
| Discord is either tone-deaf to common privacy concerns or
| they're completely conscious of them and don't want people to
| clear their message history.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| One tactic I've worked out with individual mods is I have
| them ban me, then unban me, which causes all of my posts to
| be erased from the public chat. Of course Discord probably
| still has them privately, but it's better than nothing.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| That's interesting, thanks for the tip. I would hope they
| would have a sort of garbage collection that deletes
| orphaned messages, but this is _Discord_ we 're talking
| about.
| christkv wrote:
| I don't think this will be enough in case they get sued if
| the messages contain personably identifiable information
| they will have serious problems.
| fsflover wrote:
| Not really: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/.
| still_grokking wrote:
| How does the EU enforce the deletion of said data from
| Facebook servers standing on US ground?
|
| How do I enforce deletion if I have unwittingly only a
| "shadow account" in Facebook?
| solaarphunk wrote:
| California Privacy Act also gives you similar rights.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Fine the Facebook subsidiaries incorporated in the EU. Or
| completely ban them from doing business, which prevents
| advertisers in the EU from giving them money.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| This is impossible - the fine would have to be absurdly
| high to matter and if they disabled their business in the
| EU there would be riots. Facebook can essentially do
| whatever they want as they are also likely sending
| information to services.
| sildur wrote:
| > This is impossible - the fine would have to be absurdly
| high to matter
|
| Fines here are proportional to profits, so it would be
| absurdly high for Facebook.
|
| > and if they disabled their business in the EU there
| would be riots.
|
| Not really. In the last five years I've seen an ever
| growing anti American sentiment around here. I guess it's
| because all the antics that were coming from the angry
| Cheeto.
|
| America is now seen as unstable and unreliable. The
| sentiment around here is basically (generally speaking):
| "and what happens of they decide to elect (another) Trump
| again?"
| nr2x wrote:
| Not if the Irish have any say in the matter.
| yosito wrote:
| > Can I file a restraining order against Facebook? Or Google?
|
| Not as long as you're maintaining an active relationship with
| them. First step is to break up and stop using their services
| entirely.
| fsflover wrote:
| You do not need any relationship in order to have a shadow
| profile on Facebook.
| [deleted]
| oriettaxx wrote:
| Any EU authorities out there reading this?
| mleonhard wrote:
| Even if you clear it, they continue to link future third-party
| site activity to your FB profile.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/activity_list
|
| To actually opt out, you have to click the "More Options" button,
| then "Manage Future Activity" at the bottom, then "Manage Future
| Activity" button, then toggle off the "Future Off-Facebook
| Activity" toggle.
|
| Dark patterns. So disrespectful. Shameful. :(
| TedShiller wrote:
| The most surprising thing may be that people are surprised.
| zhuber wrote:
| I once worked with a guy who said "I don't know how Facebook
| can even be making money, like they don't charge for anything."
| Seriously.
|
| Granted, this was a decade ago but even then all of us tried
| not to laugh and I just said something along the lines of "Do
| you know how they have ads for wedding venues right after you
| were engaged? That's how."
| mtnGoat wrote:
| well this is not a surprise at all. I am pretty sure facebook
| engineers have outright said the system does not have the
| capability to delete anything. Their claim was that deleting
| things "is hard"... id bet that scaling to keep everything
| forever is much harder.
| somid3 wrote:
| I tried to see my data... all i gotta say is "WWWWTTTFFF!!!!"
| <--- who knew all of this existed!
| marto1 wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if they haven't even written the code to
| actually delete stuff.
| titzer wrote:
| They will mouth some words about "our high availability data
| replication and backups are not designed to delete information
| instantly". Meanwhile, their metric ton of machine learning has
| already been loaded up with your behavioral traces and cannot
| be unlearned. It'll still predict your behavior well enough to
| target ads, even if the raw trace of what you did is gone.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Wouldn't you say the "right to be forgotten" includes
| deleting the weights and biases that have been accumulated
| for a person?
| ev1 wrote:
| Absolutely, everything needs to go.
| titzer wrote:
| I totally agree. But they can't do that. Or at least,
| it's hard. And they'll lie about it being impossible.
| stevehawk wrote:
| actually, that was the situation at one point. Facebook never
| wrote the code to delete things from their CDN.. so if you
| deleted your photo from your profile or album or whatever but
| someone else still had a link then that photo was still
| available.
|
| I _assume_ that 's changed since 2010 -
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-does-not-erase-user-d...
| bobthechef wrote:
| Given how they and companies like them behave, how they drag
| their feet and stall all the time, I am not surprised.
|
| I suspect Facebook is too useful as an intelligence and
| surveillance tool to lead to some kind of meaningful
| legislation, penalties, whatever. If you can delete your data,
| then you can hide your tracks. Also, even if we assume that the
| US at least has in its favor a cultural apprehension toward
| surveillance, China doesn't, so you'll have a situation where a
| country is monitoring everything to death while you don't know
| what's going on. At least that might be the thinking. If that
| is so, I cannot imagine any realistic solutions. A race toward
| the bottom. You would need to ween people off Facebook, to
| cause them to leave the platform in droves. The only way to do
| that is to offer something better and that something would need
| to have privacy "built-in" in some way and either remain
| profitable or decentralized.
| ldbooth wrote:
| Similarly if you try to delete your Facebook account, the only
| option is "Deactivate Account". Or at least it was for me. They
| don't give a whoot- until their bottom line losses reflects the
| damage they cause.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Is there a browser plugin or something that filters Facebook-
| related posts from HN? We get it, they don't respect your
| privacy, but seeing the same content voted to the frontpage
| multiple times a day is getting exceptionally tiring.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I've noticed when deleting reactions from my activity history,
| that after they appear to be all gone if I wait a few days more
| pops up. It is like impossible to remove them all.
| ThisWasTaken wrote:
| it's funny how when you open an article criticizing how Facebook
| tracks you the first thing you have to do is go through 70 pages
| to tell the site you're reading the article on to not track you.
| nicbou wrote:
| uBlock has a blocklist for cookie notices and other annoyances.
| Turning it off feels like watching cable TV after a decade of
| Netflix.
|
| It's crazy that we need to go through so much crap (tracking,
| cookie notices, ads, newsletter prompts, SEO keyword soup) to
| get the simplest answers.
|
| The website I run is deliberately annoyance-free. I see it as a
| competitive advantage.
| EastSmith wrote:
| Which blacklist is this?
| nicbou wrote:
| There's a few of them, labelled "annoyances". You can also
| subscribe to I Don't Care About Cookies' list.
| yosito wrote:
| There's also a Firefox extension called "I don't care about
| cookies"
| olyjohn wrote:
| The fucking article even mentions how many trackers are on
| Gizmodo, and then says "BUT THATS NORMAL ITS ON EVERY SITE YOU
| GO TO!" The author writes a piece and shits all over Facebook,
| and then goes on to minimize it when it comes to them doing it.
| ExcavateGrandMa wrote:
| The only justice that will work for you & your seeming...
|
| is simply by mastering what you do & what you use...
| user764743 wrote:
| There is also a reason websites have stopped using the term
| 'delete' and are using 'clear' instead. Because clearing
| something does not imply that it's gone unlike with delete, just
| out of view.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I'm not sure what distinction I'm supposed to be making. What
| are these websites doing differently?
|
| To me, 'delete' means 'remove this entry' and 'clear' means
| 'remove the data in this entry.'
| lprd wrote:
| Color me surprised. I kept hoping that with one of these privacy
| leaks, or any of the other atrocities that FB has committed, it
| would've triggered the beginning of their demise...but nope.
| Their stock prices just keep rising, and people continue to use
| the platform.
| patorjk wrote:
| People are addicted and enjoy it too much. I have family
| members who spend all day posting memes, pictures, comments,
| etc. The only way I see FB failing is if something better comes
| along that can replace it.
| captainclam wrote:
| _... and people continue to use the platform_
|
| I imagine that the number of people who even hear or read about
| these privacy leaks represent a minuscule fraction of the user
| base.
|
| And of those that are aware of these leaks, a small fraction
| are concerned about internet privacy.
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(page generated 2021-04-12 23:03 UTC)