[HN Gopher] How to permanently delete your Facebook account
___________________________________________________________________
How to permanently delete your Facebook account
Author : gigama
Score : 602 points
Date : 2021-10-06 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.facebook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.facebook.com)
| streamofdigits wrote:
| In many parts of Europe Whatsapp is _physically embedded_ in the
| landscape (in neighborhood signs of community "watch" groups).
|
| People have sleepwalked into a nightmare and nobody is really
| honest enough to admit it. Banana republics pretending their are
| sophisticated and caring societies.
| MrDresden wrote:
| I thoroughly oppose the idea that to be able to have meaningful
| human relationships, I need to subscribe to a walled garden run
| by a profit hungry private entity with an extremely bad track
| record of handling privacy, security and ethics.
|
| I exited their whole ecosystem 2 years ago. Never found the urge
| to go back.
|
| Leaving all of the fake-ery of Instagram and noise of Facebook
| behind has improved my day to day life immensely.
|
| Many of my Whatsapp contacts had already begun to move to Signal
| so that helped. Some of the rest I talk to through Twitter. With
| the viable rest I call or use sms.
|
| A lot of them I just let go (were dead relationships already).
| pcmoney wrote:
| When I did it in 2016 I wrote a small script to undo every
| activity I had ever done. Then I deleted it. Also changed the
| password to a max length so it was impossible to login for the
| 30days.
| stevecat wrote:
| Something seems to remain on their servers though.
|
| I own a very short gmail.com address which I'm (far too) proud of
| but it does receive a lot of other people's mail; there are
| apparently a lot of people called Steve who don't understand how
| email addresses work.
|
| Someone created and then permanently deleted a Facebook account
| with my address. Which has permanently locked me out of ever
| using my email address with Facebook (they block +alias addresses
| and gmail/googlemail.com too). I use Facebook casually to keep in
| touch with family/friends and have had to keep an old email
| account alive just for it. Facebook support are no help.
|
| /rant
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| The best options are: - never sign up in the first place - give
| entirely fake data, as much as possible - change data to rubbish
| data afterward - just never log in again, I am pretty sure
| dormant accounts are the worst, nothing to collect, nothing to
| track, no ads can be placed there in a meaningful way.
|
| A dormant account with rubbish data is the best way to hinder
| their profits.
| roydivision wrote:
| Most of the time tech companies have their fans and detractors.
| In virtually any discussion about tech companies, you'll find
| people for the company in question, and others against, Apple and
| Google are great examples.
|
| I find it interesting that I don't think I've ever come across
| any discussion about Facebook (and I read a lot of them) where
| anyone is defending them. Either people are strongly against the
| company, or at most they admit grudgingly that they do use
| Facebook services because everyone else they know uses it.
|
| The only people I ever hear championing Facebook are Zuckerberg
| and other top management.
|
| I don't have a Facebook account, so possibly all the positive
| discussion is on Facebook itself and I'm not seeing it.
| antihero wrote:
| I would imagine that the proponents of Facebook are the huge
| _huge_ amounts of people who are less technologically savvy,
| don 't really give two shits about privacy surrounding data
| they perceive to given up willingly, and aren't really involved
| in any sort of discourse.
|
| However, they absolutely love the fact that they've been able
| to keep in contact with family, old friends, and see the value
| of the human connection they are able to get through Facebook
| as far greater than the negatives.
| [deleted]
| dougmwne wrote:
| I'll step into that role then. I am a member of some Facebook
| groups that have been hugely helpful on a personal level. The
| community page software may not be perfect, but it is
| accessible and can bring together a really heterogeneous user
| base with diverse perspectives, much more so than Reddit. The
| groups pages are entirely separate from the toxic feed. I would
| be absolutely bummed if they were to blink out of existence.
| simpss wrote:
| As a counter point to this. Facebook has (tried and mostly
| succeeded) to replace community forums that used to be either
| public or with open registration and without the negative
| effects of facebook.
|
| Stuff that's running phpbb or other similar software.
| asdff wrote:
| I was bummed too when fb blinked my community ran forums out
| of existence
| TomSwirly wrote:
| I am unfortunately still on Facebook - I moved to another
| continent in the last few years and it's the only way to keep
| track of people.
|
| At least from my friends, everyone hates it, left, center and
| right-wing alike.
| hdhdbid wrote:
| At least in my opinion for this on HN, you get downvoted very
| quickly on HN to have such an opinion.
|
| I work for FAANG. I generally dont comment on HN but recently I
| read every thread about FAANG to have a thread that read like
| you should be ashamed to work there. I replied, Even before i
| worked there, I used their products to keep in touch woth my
| family/friends, at a startup I worked at we used open source
| tech from these companies, I also have always benefited from
| owning the stock in my retirement account via index funds. So
| why is it that working for the company is not ok but being a
| consumer, investor etc ok. And also asked if there's an
| acceptable list of companies to work at without moral
| judgements. Pointed out that people have strong feelings about
| big tech, big pharma, big oil etc etc. As you'd imagine, I was
| downvoted pretty soon and you realize trying to convince a
| stranger on the internet is pointless and gains you nothing.
| hncurious wrote:
| A lot of people on HN downvote for disagreement, which I
| think creates a chilling effect, reinforces groupthink and
| results in a warped view of reality. For what it's worth, I
| try to balance that out by upvoting gray'd out comments that
| are sincere or well argued regardless of whether I personally
| agree with the statement or not. One of the things I
| appreciate about HN is seeing positions that challenge my
| existing ideas.
| ploum wrote:
| The fact is that working for a company is investing a lot of
| your time and energy to make this company more powerful.
|
| Your work count. Really.
|
| So your work should be as much as possible aligned with your
| moral values. Lot of people blind themselves with the salary
| and weak justification. I find that complete hypocrisy.
|
| Now, is the company you are working for aligned with your own
| moral values?
|
| Only you can answer that ;-)
| hdhdbid1 wrote:
| Its funny, lot of the responses for this thread are
| investing my retirement money and profiting off it is fine,
| using products/services of such companies is fine, but
| working there, that's where I draw the line, that's just
| morally wrong. Its a lot of I'll draw the line where I want
| to and belittle others who do it differently.
| asdff wrote:
| It's not like people are going to their broker and saying
| "buy facebook" then going online and saying "ban
| facebook." Most people probably have no clue that their
| retirement indexes include like 1% facebook stock in the
| mix. With the way retirement funds are set up in this
| country you really don't have much choice in the
| investment mix unless you are savvy and with time on your
| hands to study and pick your own horses.
|
| Using another example, I'm against war and violence too,
| but that doesn't make me a hypocrite for paying taxes
| that go on to buy bombs, and paying taxes that fund war
| is just not the same thing at all as me working for
| Blackwater directly.
| naivsdaya wrote:
| Ok, let's agree that some of us have a moral position
| against x and are benefiting financially from x but are
| too busy or too ignorant to do anything about it.
|
| And, lets also agree that being employed a company is
| bad, the argument still seems to breakdown soon enough.
| Generally, the engineers are to blame because they make
| enough money and could choose other options, but not
| others capacities of employment e.g. a driver, cleaning
| staff, cook at one of their food courts etc. at the same
| company. They could've found other options too if they
| really wanted. Should a person making minimum wage now
| look into a company and its moral decisions in the
| past/present before taking up a job. Generally seems to
| come down to, oh its wrong but beyond a $ amount (an
| arbitrary line I just drew for myself), which just seems
| a very inconsistent moral position to me. Well, if you
| still think its a reasonable position to say its wrong
| but when the benefit you reap is > $x, can one of you
| tell me above what $ amount do the moral values apply?
| asdff wrote:
| I mean, I wouldn't work minimum wage for a company like
| this either. There is no shortage of job opportunities
| these days at the bottom level what with most every
| business having staffing issues.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| How about working there and doing a bad job? Is that a
| moral postion?
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Well I think there's quite the difference any. A regular
| user of Facebook is worth roughly tens of euros. But
| working there rewards you with a salary that's easily
| upwards of 200k. Given that they're not losing money if
| you, you could consider yourself as one of the few power
| users around by providing a value to evil corp north of
| your salary. So I think you can definitely differentiate
| between a regular user contributing 50euro of value, or
| contributing >200k of value. Making numbers up here but
| suffice to say you're talking about an order of
| difference north of 100x. Definitely something to think
| about I reckon, and definitely something reasonable to
| draw the line at. Imagine hyping the evil corp and adding
| 100+ users would equate to a year of working there,
| roughly.
| naivsdaya wrote:
| So it is morally wrong but only above a $ amount? :)
|
| Anyway, the irony is interesting, some people on HN
| unable to control the urge to tell a stranger on the
| internet that he/she is morally inferior without
| considering how it makes them feel, while blaming another
| platform for similar effects and how it negatively
| impacts people.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| No, you argued that people draw an arbitrary line
| regarding morals when working for evil corp vs consuming.
| I tried to indicate to you why that line isn't so
| arbitrary as it indicates a factor of x100, or whatever
| exact number it is that is many times larger.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| FWIW, I own stock in a lot of companies that are net-
| negatives for society directly and through index funds. When
| these companies succeed in the market I get a consolation
| prize.
|
| In our modern market, I don't believe that my owning FB stock
| is contributing to their success. If I were to work for them
| I would be.
| devilduck wrote:
| People on HN do not influence anything significant
| jasode wrote:
| _> I don't have a Facebook account, so possibly all the
| positive discussion is on Facebook itself and I'm not seeing
| it._
|
| We don't like to admit it but the HN demographic is a self-
| reinforcing "filter bubble" on some topics such as Facebook,
| Uber, Apple. Outside of HN, almost all non-techies I interact
| with don't complain about them.
|
| I remember seeing a lady's gardening channel on Youtube and
| wondered how she got so many lucrative sponsorships since her
| subscriber count and view counts seemed too low. I later
| learned it's because _the majority of her gardening fans '
| interactions and video views actually come from Facebook and
| not Youtube_. Same for demographic of sewers for quilts &
| clothes.
|
| So the Venn Diagram with one circle being female
| gardeners/sewers and the other circle being HN commenters have
| virtually no overlap. Hence we're in a filter bubble. The
| gardeners/sewers aren't complaining about Facebook because it's
| a positive in their lives and HN commenters never see that. I
| also read somewhere that Pinterest and Instagram are also more
| heavily skewed towards females.
|
| (Because I don't have a Facebook account and got a lot of my
| info about FB from HN, it made me ignorant of the various
| communities that use FB in positive ways. I often wonder what
| other ways HN distorts my views that I'm totally unaware of.)
| treesknees wrote:
| Outside of our bubble I don't see complaints about the
| company itself, but complaints about the product and content.
|
| It seems nobody is very happy with Facebook. I have family
| members who will always agree that Facebook is full of
| uninformed opinions and everyone always seems to be
| disagreeing/arguing and it's full of complaining and
| political posts. And yet people continue to use it.
| asdff wrote:
| > And yet people continue to use it.
|
| In my experience the people complaining about the junk
| content on facebook have checked out from using facebook
| very much years ago. Among my millenial peers at least
| engagement across all social networks has dropped like a
| stone. FB just exists to dump wedding photos now.
| aritmo wrote:
| I do not understand what is the fuss about deleting your Facebook
| account.
|
| 1. Create a VPS 2. Install one of those Facebook scraping tools
| 3. Use your account credentials and start scraping. 4, Facebook
| will freak out, lock you out and ask for passport and ID cards.
| Do not provide any.
|
| During their next account purge, they will remove your account.
| gambiting wrote:
| Or....just click throught the form few times and have it
| deleted this way, what's the big deal?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I like how "deactivate account" still keeps Facebook Messenger
| fully enabled and all of your posts remain online. That's
| probably so that your friends can ask you why you deactivated
| your account ;)
| [deleted]
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: Facebook is quite decent and gives sufficient
| controls over privacy to its users. Google on other hand is
| horrendous.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > sufficient controls over privacy to its users
|
| He? By how, showing a cookie window in EU and not even
| respecting the settings in there?
| stevecat wrote:
| The privacy controls in-app are pretty good with regards to
| who you share your posts with, etc. but I don't think that's
| the same type of privacy that causes people to leave.
| cascom wrote:
| I think of that more as visibility than privacy.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| You're talking about privacy from other users, generally when
| people refer to privacy problems and Facebook it's about
| privacy from Facebook (most people have none).
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Unpopular opinion: Facebook is quite decent and gives
| sufficient controls over privacy to its users. Google on other
| hand is horrendous.
|
| I'm not concerned about which "friends" can see my posts, it's
| the _platform_ hoovering up every keystroke.
|
| Which in-app privacy controls can stop that?
| kosasbest wrote:
| Had to temporarily whitelist the page and turn on JS to view
| (there wasn't even a <noscript> message saying I needed JS). Then
| since I am in Spain, I got a bunch of Spanish, when I'm an
| English speaker. This is bad UX. I expected better from FB.
| kevmo wrote:
| This is intentional.
|
| They don't want you to be able to do this, so they make pages
| unusable.
|
| I tried to delink Facebook and Instagram recently. They make
| you re-sign into FB via Insta... and it refused to sign me in
| (I was 100% using the correct password and tried many times).
| The sign-in just kept failing, until I was like "This is
| intentional, and Facebook will not let me de-link the apps."
| and gave up.
|
| Really time for the FTC and DOJ to take Facebook all the way to
| trial for this sort of stuff. No more settlements!
| bserge wrote:
| Their definition of taking a break is strange. Just don't visit
| Facebook lol
|
| Also, are they still doing the shadow profiles thing where they
| create "accounts" for your name in order to entice other people
| to join Facebook? And if _you_ join, people you might know are
| conveniently already waiting for you. That always seemed shady as
| hell.
| oldie wrote:
| As far as I know, they are. And, since I don't have a Facebook
| account, I can't find a way to submit a GDPR subject access
| request.
| shapefrog wrote:
| Many moons ago I purged everything I could, left a generic
| profile picture and barely logged in since. That way I 'own' my
| shadow profile and it is harder for someone to pretend to be me
| via a facebook account (I operate a 'plant your flag' policy
| for security as much as anything else on these public
| platforms).
|
| Nobody is holding a gun to your head to log back in to the
| account any time soon. I think the last time I actually did log
| in was > 12 months ago.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| It's the same language used by gambling companies. "Take a
| break" rather than "Break your cycle of addiction by leaving us
| for good".
|
| Not entirely surprising.
| mrits wrote:
| You don't defeat alcoholism by giving up a type of liquor.
| You can't quit Vodka and switch to Tequila and expect to have
| a different experience. Quitting Facebook/Instagram hurts FB
| but doesn't do much to help yourself when you do the same
| things on TikTok.
| markx2 wrote:
| You don't need to visit facebook, you just need to visit a page
| that has their script embedded.
|
| nextdns.io does a good job of blocking facebook. They base
| their block on https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists which has
| this list
| https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...
| tremon wrote:
| That blocklist is very narrow, I would suggest using
| https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/lists/facebook-
| ext... instead.
|
| Or just use this RPZ policy (add *.<domain> wildcard entries
| as well, omitted for brevity): instagram.com.
| *. cdninstagram.com. *. messenger.com. *.
| facebook.com. *. fbcdn.com. *. fbcdn.net. *.
| fb.com. *. fb.me. *.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| So through the downtime of Facebook I learned they have
| their own registrar which makes it, I think, a lot easier
| to figure out all domains related to that registrar and
| simply black list any and all domains hosted on that
| registrar? Than you know for sure that even a typo page
| won't be tracking you. I just don't know how to find all
| domains related to a given registrar and if that is even
| possible.
| heurisko wrote:
| My experience deleting Facebook has been strange. Maybe I didn't
| do it right, but I have continued to receive "sign in with
| 1-click" emails, and at one time I was notified somewhat
| disconcertingly that someone had memorialised me.
|
| I don't find a problem with WhatsApp.
| cblackthornekc wrote:
| I did this a year or so ago. I knew it was complete when I got an
| email from Paypal saying my Facebook account was unlinked. Funny
| thing...I don't remember linking my Paypal account.
| bborud wrote:
| I think it should be a legal requirement that users are able to
| configure retention of their data. For instance that any content
| you post will only be retained for N number of weeks/
| months/years. And that social media platforms over a certain size
| have to agree to auditing to ensure that this data is actually
| deleted.
| quaintdev wrote:
| This argument is flawed. How can you be sure if the policy is
| enforced at back-end?
|
| The better way is to create a solution where users have control
| over data and the apps interact with data. This should have
| been the model from the beginning but now I guess it will never
| happen. Even if someone successfully implements this it will be
| just as hard IPv6 to adopt if not more.
| bborud wrote:
| Audits.
|
| (And yes, I've worked for companies that deal with lots of
| data that has strict retention limits by law, and oh boy were
| there audits and oh boy are you in trouble if/when you screw
| up)
|
| As for your proposed solution: I don't think I understand
| what you mean. Could you expand on it?
| quaintdev wrote:
| True audits are really good way to keep companies in check
| but what about a company like TikTok or companies in other
| countries where you are not sure if the audits are not
| compromised.
|
| Regarding the solution I was talking about check out Solid
| by Tim Berners Lee
| dotancohen wrote:
| As someone who implements these types of requirements, this
| suggestion just adds complexity where none is needed. In the
| software, and the database, and the backup strategy, and for
| the average user. Complexity requires time, money, and
| introduces bugs and user error.
|
| Right now we are required by law to remove user data upon
| request (Europe). That law is strong enough to cover those who
| need it.
| bborud wrote:
| Are you suggesting that not inconveniencing developers is
| more important than a right to privacy? I'd have to disagree
| with you if this is the case.
|
| I've worked both for companies that fall under extra scrutiny
| by government due to market position and for companies that
| deal with data that has strict retention limits. Yes, it
| increases complexity, but the laws that seek to protect
| people's privacy are far more important than any
| inconvenience to companies.
|
| (And yes: in both cases there were regular audits and any
| lack of compliance had very real consequences)
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Are you suggesting that not inconveniencing developers
| > is more important than a right to privacy?
|
| I would very much appreciate if you could show me which of
| my words led you to that conclusion. Thank you.
| Zy-Zario wrote:
| Actually, Telegram already does that. Similar to how your
| gmail account is automatically deleted after a certain time.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| Actually GDPR requires you to delete data when no longer
| needed. How long data is needed depends on what type of data
| it is. For example financial transactions are covered by
| other laws to be kept for certain amount of time. If data is
| linked to a survey that is completed then, by law, that data
| is no longer needed and should be deleted. How long should
| photo likes and comments be kept? I don't think there are
| good guidelines or judgements regarding this but it is
| nevertheless something to take into consideration and in most
| cases delete data based on age.
| [deleted]
| arkh wrote:
| So here is an idea about deleting accounts. Usually people may
| want to undo it sometime but if it's deleted it is deleted.
|
| One of the things required by the GDPR is a way to export your
| data and even import it (article 20, right to portability). So
| you should implement a way to do that.
|
| Then when users ask to delete their account, create an export,
| encrypt it with a one-time use key which you mail to the user,
| store this encrypted dump and remove the rest of the data. Now if
| the deletion was an error the user can get their key in their
| email and get their account reinstated. And no one in your
| company can access the data in the meantime.
| ghego1 wrote:
| Technically very smart solution, but legally way too risky.
|
| If there's ever a breach, for example someone steals the key
| and then accesses the data, the fine will be super high given
| that the company has retrained data after the user asked to
| delete it.
|
| To mitigate such risk, the company would at least need explicit
| consent of the user, at which point it's just as simply asking
| the user to not really delete their account.
|
| A viable option, legally speaking, could be to send the dump to
| the user, in a way that can be easily imported back if the user
| ever wants to login again.
| arkh wrote:
| > for example someone steals the key and then accesses the
| data
|
| It was why I schemed it so the key is sent to the user but
| not kept by you. Someone steals the user key? They can ask
| for a restore but they won't have access to the data unless
| they've got the user login info too. An employee steals the
| encrypted data? Enjoy the time spent cracking the
| cryptography.
|
| A little like one of the solutions for deletion in Event
| Sourced systems but instead of completely losing the keys,
| you give it to the user first.
| cotton-cho wrote:
| I deleted my Facebook account straight after the Cambridge
| Analytica scandal. Now I just have a fake one as I got an Oculus
| for my birthday and I also use Facebook to access the Marketplace
| as Kijiji and Craigslist are sometimes really dry in my area as
| most people use FB market.
| willis936 wrote:
| Deleting social media accounts is a bad idea. You should squat
| them and never log in.
| acwan93 wrote:
| I was going to write this. It's a way to prevent online
| identity theft, to avoid someone impersonating you online.
|
| I kept my social media accounts even though I stopped using
| them. If someone ever impersonates me, I can use these inactive
| accounts to say those are definitely mine.
| tdrdt wrote:
| It doesn't prevent identify theft. Someone can still create
| an account using your name.
| willis936 wrote:
| But no one can make you remove connections from an existing
| social media account.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| I wish there was a way to do so without having to ask people you
| haven't seen or met for more than a decade (if they can even
| still access) to verify that it is indeed you trying to access
| with the same mail an account that's been sitting for way too
| long still. I understand the possible risk and inconvenience, but
| I can't be alone being struck with an account like that. Hell,
| I'm too afraid to even see if it's public and visible now, since
| the last time I tried to delete it (for the fourth of fifth time,
| because spammers kept turning it back on by trying to login years
| ago, I presume) it kicked me out before I could accept the new
| ToS. I haven't received any responses on my queries to provide a
| contact for GDPR requests that isn't a blackhole, also. I should
| probably just try sending one at the disabled accounts address
| too.
| martin_a wrote:
| Well, I think you've done everything you can. The GDPR requires
| a response from the data handler in a timely manner. If
| Facebook fails to do so, for whatever reason, you're free to
| contact your privacy/data regulation authorities.
| [deleted]
| _ttg wrote:
| Faster shortcuts:
|
| https://deletefacebook.com/
|
| https://deleteinstagram.com/
|
| It's probably by design, but from experience most people will
| need non-trivial discipline/hacks to get around the 30 day window
| and avoid reflexively logging in. Would be curious to know how
| many people who try deleting their accounts follow through to the
| end
| jcims wrote:
| If folks can't go cold turkey I'd suggest unfollowing everyone
| first. It makes the site much more useful _and_ easier to quit.
| abyssin wrote:
| This was the trick that made it possible for me to stop being
| addicted to Facebook. You don't have to fight the urge to
| load the app. You get a strange sense of satisfaction from
| slowly unfollowing everything. And the more you unfollow, the
| less what you're shown is interesting. You retrain your brain
| by getting less and less dopamine hits from the action you
| couldn't control. Then a day comes where you load the app and
| there'a simply nothing to see.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I deleted mine 3 or 4 years ago, and I did end up logging in a
| couple of times during that 30 day window - "Oh, I'll just have
| a quick look at those wedding photos" or "I want to go on that
| trip so I best keep it logged in for that" kind of thing -
| purely instinctive at the time to find that info.
|
| I imagine if you are hooked on the whole 'social interaction'
| thing, the 30 day sliding window is ... unhelpful.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I deleted mine 2 years ago, and definitely followed through on
| it. Once it was done, it was absolutely zero problem to have it
| out of my life. The only thing I'm curious about though, is
| what would happen if I try to login again. I'm terrified to
| even try, for fear that somehow it wasn't actually deleted even
| though that's exactly what I did.
|
| Update: I decided to finally try logging in and thankfully it
| said it could not locate an account under my email. So I guess
| that's a good thing. I do wonder if it triggered something else
| though, just by my trying to login.
| DownGoat wrote:
| If your email has ever appeared in any breaches, your account
| probably has had many login attempts.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Yes, but were those other login attempts using the actual
| password that was correct when my account was active? I'm
| probably just being paranoid... of _course_ FB deleted my
| account and all its details.
| haunter wrote:
| The irony here that it's harder to delete your HN account and all
| your comments
| raxxorrax wrote:
| HN has anonymous accounts and personally identifiable
| information can be hidden or removed by the user, which to me
| has the same effect. HN complains to me that I cannot reset my
| pwd if I ever forget it because I didn't even share my mail.
|
| People often claim anonymous platforms are doomed to fail but I
| think social media is the main problem currently.
| asdff wrote:
| >removed by the user
|
| Only within a certain timeframe. Unlike reddit eventually
| your comments are no longer deletable or editable by you, and
| you have to email the webmaster in this case to ask for an
| old comment to be manually deleted, its not even an automated
| mechanism.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I changed my HN username earlier this year for _reasons_.
|
| However if you search HN via the Algolia search link at the
| bottom of this page, you can still find my old posts under my
| old username.
|
| Not to mention the 1,000s of self-hosted HN scrapers out
| there.
| fossuser wrote:
| You can email dang and they'll work with you depending on
| what privacy stuff you need, but yeah it's a manual
| process.
|
| People have changed the users on old comments they no
| longer want associated with themselves and such. There was
| discussion a while back about it (I haven't taken advantage
| of this myself).
| dahart wrote:
| Is it harder, are you sure? There isn't a button, but HN also
| doesn't try to talk you out of it.
|
| Unlike Facebook, Hacker News has no Personally Identifiable
| Information on you, didn't ask for any, and isn't trying to
| gather any. Email address might be the lone exception, but you
| can use any throwaway email you want. So you might have chosen
| to share some, but other than email, HN has no way to index it
| or even know that it's personal to you. There's no network, no
| photos, no credit cards. There are no ads that HN is selling
| your PII to. Unlike FB, HN doesn't do any EU specific business
| or target EU residents in any way, so combined with the
| complete lack of PII, it's very likely GDPR does not apply to
| HN. Comments aren't enough, they don't act as a catalog of PII.
|
| That said, have you tried emailing HN to see if they'll happily
| delete your comments? If there was a legitimate problem that
| you needed to erase, if your identity become known against your
| will, I'd bet the mods here would be happy to help you.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I wonder at the time limit to edit/delete a comment on HN. I
| try to think carefully about the things I say and often have a
| change in heart about saying something long after the change
| window has expired. Is the logic behind this limit explained
| anywhere?
| thujlife wrote:
| you cant
| shapefrog wrote:
| hence the irony ...
| NabiDev wrote:
| Just upload some bannable content. That is way faster then
| regular process.
| swamp-agr wrote:
| The situation is quite interesting here.
|
| - Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe.
|
| - Formally, it's possible to proceed with "Permanently delete my
| account".
|
| - You will even receive email assuring you that two weeks later
| profile would be completely deleted.
|
| - Then, couple years later you'll occasionally seen email from
| facebook that someone tried to log in into your ("permanently
| deleted") account.
|
| - You'll try to log in, probably restore and change the password
| among the way.
|
| - And after that you'll be successfully logged in. And the
| profile's state would be like nothing changes. Nothing.
| Completely.
|
| - You'll contact Support. Seriously? They'll ignore you.
|
| - Maybe some interaction with 3rd-party websites triggered
| cancellation of the process, you thought.
|
| - Then, you'll implement blacklist just to avoid any interaction
| with facebook, something similar to:
| https://pastebin.com/FAV2f9eA and try to repeat the flow again.
|
| - Then another 2+ years later situation will repeat again. Deja-
| vu. And again. And again.
|
| There's no way to delete facebook profile if facebook didn't
| really care about its users.
| c8g wrote:
| probably you were in a hurry or distressed and didn't read the
| text while deleting the account and probably, you have disabled
| your account. They will offer an option to disable account in
| case you change your mind later. Please stop spreading
| misinformation.
| swamp-agr wrote:
| Disagree.
|
| - I explicitly check to avoid any "disabling".
|
| - The only intent was to permanently delete the account.
|
| - You can believe me or not and I did it really careful.
| iforgetti wrote:
| Move to a European country and Sue there for GDPR
| violation.
| flipbrad wrote:
| You don't need to live in the EU/EEA to invoke GDPR
| rights. Case in point: the UK authority upheld a US
| resident's GDPR claim against Cambridge Analytica (and
| yes, Facebook was involved). https://ico.org.uk/about-
| the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-bl...
| dahart wrote:
| What do you mean "upheld"? The story in your link
| describes the company refusing to comply and then ends.
| It's true that you don't have to be currently living in
| the EU to invoke your GDPR rights if you're an EU citizen
| traveling abroad, or if you're a foreign citizen
| traveling or residing in the EU. GDPR applies to
| companies that market to people in the EU or do business
| in the EU. BUT - GDPR is an EU law, it does not apply to
| US citizens living in the US, which is why the company in
| your story was legally entitled to refuse to comply.
| flipbrad wrote:
| You're quite wrong. GDPR _can_ apply to citizens in the
| US, and the link I posted shows the ICO enforcing it in
| their favour. SCL Elections Ltd was taken to court and
| then fined PS15,000 for not complying with that US
| resident 's request.https://ico.org.uk/about-the-
| ico/news-and-events/news-and-bl... I expect that US
| resident could also have brought a civil lawsuit, at
| least in UK courts, for damages.
|
| The EU and UK GDPRs can also apply to companies in the
| US, or elsewhere. That's because location of the business
| (including subsidiaries) OR location of the individuals,
| are hooks under the GDPR's territoriality tests in
| Article 3. You usually need one or the other though; the
| way GDPR Article 3 works, it's pretty hard to imagine it
| applying to a US-only business in respect of US resident-
| individuals.
| dahart wrote:
| Yes it can apply to US citizens in certain cases, I
| thought I agreed with you on that, did I not? It's still
| a fact that GDPR does not always (or even normally) apply
| to US residents doing business with US companies. UK
| courts have no authority over US companies operating only
| in the US with US residents who aren't traveling abroad.
| Cambridge Analytica is a _British_ company, that is why
| GDPR applies to them. So yes, I was wrong to conclude
| prematurely based on your link that this example is one
| where the company was legally entitled to refuse to
| comply. But the take-home message doesn't change - GDPR
| doesn't automatically apply to non-EU residents or non-EU
| companies, unless or until one or both parties has some
| EU involvement.
| flipbrad wrote:
| The part I most disagreed with is "GDPR is an EU law, it
| does not apply to US citizens living in the US". Yes it
| does, I provided an example. Your follow up is a lot
| closer to the mark.
| dahart wrote:
| GDPR is an EU law. It doesn't automatically apply to
| people in the US. That's the only reason I replied - your
| original framing left an implied suggestion that it might
| commonly or by default apply to US citizens, without
| discussing under what conditions. Arguing that you don't
| have to be an EU resident leaves the misleading
| impression that the EU doesn't have to be involved. I
| think it's important to note that the EU part is required
| _somewhere_ in the company-customer relationship for GDPR
| to have any say in the matter, and it's important
| specifically because this is a common misconception and
| the misconception is being abused in some cases to coerce
| compliance where it's not legally required. I know this
| as a US business owner that gets emails from US companies
| on behalf of US citizens that are demanding certain
| actions and rights under GDPR, without a legal basis to
| do so.
| cutler wrote:
| Pre- or post-Brexit?
| OJFord wrote:
| Why would that matter?
|
| Here are the changes: https://assets.publishing.service.g
| ov.uk/government/uploads/...
|
| Afaik it's entirely administrative, e.g.:
|
| > ~~an adequacy decision by the Commission~~ relevant
| adequacy regulations under section 17A of the 2018 Act
|
| ('the Commission' being the European Commission, and no
| longer relevant.)
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > Why would that matter?
|
| Because since Brexit, the UK is no longer protected by
| the GDPR.
| OJFord wrote:
| That is perhaps pedantically true in a way you almost
| certainly don't mean, that there is no longer 'the GDPR',
| there is now the EU's GDPR and the UK's GDPR (both using
| that name) ... but basically false.
|
| As I said above, it was kept with the necessary
| amendments. That documents title: GDPR - Keeling
| Schedule. Introductory paragraph:
|
| > This schedule has been prepared by the Department for
| Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is intended for
| illustrative purposes only to assist the reader in
| understanding the changes to be made to the retained
| General Data Protection Regulation by the Data
| Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications
| (Amendments etc)(EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (as amended by
| the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic
| Communications (Amendments etc)(EU Exit) Regulations 2020
| (subject to Parliamentary approval) when these come into
| force.
| sbarre wrote:
| Yes that sounds entirely reasonable and practical.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you can't "sue" under the GDPR. The best
| you can do is report them to your country's privacy
| regulator but so far all of them are absolutely
| incompetent or unwilling to enforce the regulation.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| Hello from Amsterdam!
|
| I'm confused. Are you expecting me to spend hundreds of
| thousands of Euros to get together a team of lawyers and
| spend years litigating with Facebook?
|
| It's not even clear if I have standing. And what damages
| would I get? $3.50?
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| Couldnt you transfer your account temporary?
| swamp-agr wrote:
| I am in the middle of exactly that process!
| puglr wrote:
| What are the actual remedies available to you in your
| jurisdiction? Which one(s) are you pursuing?
| [deleted]
| itomato wrote:
| "disabling" until later is the opposite of immediate
| deletion. Please stop spreading disinformation.
| c8g wrote:
| Even your computer has delete and cancel button. Isn't the
| cancel button opposite of immediate deletion when I am
| explicitly trying to delete file. Hope you can understand
| and don't mock others.
| Le_Dook wrote:
| I live in Ireland. A while after GDPR came into effect, I went
| about deleted a Microsoft account I didn't use anymore. Deleted
| it on the site, contacted support to request all data be wiped.
| Done. About 3 years later I get an email that it was accessed
| and they disabled it for illegal activity. Deleted it in the
| site, contacted support to request all data be wiped. Honestly
| think it's more worthwhile to just change the account info to
| garbage and leave it
| OJFord wrote:
| I live in the UK, I tried to delete my PayPal account (that I
| never wanted to create, it came out of what I thought was a
| 'guest checkout' flow) and was repeatedly told I needed to
| provide PII that they didn't currently have in order to
| 'verify' my identity so they could delete it.
| Svperstar wrote:
| I got locked out of my PayPal, after 5 years of inactivity
| PayPal finally deleted the account themselves.
| toyg wrote:
| Now even youtube wants your PII to "verify your age" for
| the silliest of videos.
| swamp-agr wrote:
| You cannot be quite sure
|
| - that someone who takes over your "garbage" account
|
| - could fake someone else (on your behalf)
|
| - with a traces on corporate servers that will lead
| authorities to you in the future.
|
| It might be highly unlikely to happen, though.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| One way to leave is to garbage the account, then put a max
| size password on it, generated randomly. Then forget about
| the whole thing. Maybe that is safe enough?
| epicide wrote:
| Until they actually delete the data, there's a way for
| someone other than you to get to it. It could require a
| terrible password reset feature or a breach, but the data
| is still there.
| shrimpx wrote:
| I now actively avoid signing up for services unless I really
| really need to, just to avoid this mess. These shady deletion
| practices effectively kill new signups -- in my case, at
| least.
| trutannus wrote:
| This is a bit hyperbolic, and a little unbelievable. Is it
| possible that you experienced a bug in Facebook? Or that
| someone else had access to your account, which prevented the
| deletion? You've essentially asserted that you've caught
| Facebook lying about the account deletion process, while not
| showing us any proof outside of your comment.
|
| Not located in US/UK/Europe, however my deleted account is
| fully deleted. Can't even 'reset' the password on it since
| there's no email found when I try to use the reset.
|
| I don't like Facebook, but I don't think there's a point in
| getting riled up by one person's comment on HackerNews. It
| reminds me of the thread where someone was claiming they were
| under surveillance for using ProtonMail.
| swamp-agr wrote:
| Yes, it is possible that I experienced a bug at least three
| times (2010, 2014 and 2020), certainly.
|
| It might be the case, sure.
|
| Last email (as of today) about permanent deletion was one
| year ago. During next year I will give it another try: log in
| and come back to you, then.
| trutannus wrote:
| No need to get hostile. You've made an unsubstantiated
| claim, I'm asking for some proof of which there's still
| none. Remember, I tried the exact same test with the login
| as you, and couldn't reproduce.
|
| Like I said, there's a number of reasonable reasons why
| your account didn't get deleted, all of them pass the
| Occam's Razor test a little better than "Facebook just
| didn't delete _my_ account /is not deleting accounts in
| secret".
|
| You're making a statement which, if true, is huge -- that
| Facebook is secretly retaining accounts after deletion,
| despite multiple credible sources (IE: TIME) running
| detailed articles to the contrary. On top of that _your
| anecdotal evidence_ is contradicted by _my anecdotal
| evidence_. So I hope you understand if I don 't take this
| at face-value.
| winternett wrote:
| Nobody seems to remember the time back when FaceBook forced
| everyone on the platform to use their real name... It was
| exactly the point their plan to gather data matured I believe.
|
| This is also why many sites and apps offer verification
| programs as well in my understanding... Verifying a user's ID
| has been a practices for ages now, but it did nothing to stop
| the growth of disinformation because that's not what
| verification was for IMO.
|
| An unregulated private company asking you for official
| government documentation and your real name is definitely
| tracking you in my opinion. Even friends commenting with your
| name and family associations/connections on your account can
| easily ID everyone.
|
| They are not a government agency with the authority to ask
| people for government ID, but somehow they convinced everyone
| to use their real name, and it didn't stop the decay of conduct
| decorum on the platform, it only served to track information
| more accurately.
|
| Even people who have never registered for FB are indexed by
| them based on tagged photos and in posts that others have made
| about them using their names.
|
| They also track people based on interactions across other apps
| entirely not associated with FB... That's IMO why certain sites
| slowed and faulted mysteriously when their domain went offline.
|
| I am willing to bet that they have a really interesting splunk
| (or similar tech) dashboard they can look at and search any
| time they want full of analytics based on almost every human on
| earth.
|
| Account privacy settings have always been a very ambiguous
| "shell game" with FB and other social apps, and often do not
| work properly, what makes anyone think a "delete account"
| request would ever be honored by such a company that
| manipulates it's user base?
|
| I also suspect that each of the major social platforms do the
| same type of info gathering to varying extents as well.
|
| This is some serious "James Bond island cave villain" stuff,
| and whatever congressional action comes next (if anything does)
| may tell us where the future is going for our privacy and
| personal info rights... :|
| xadhominemx wrote:
| > An unregulated private company asking you for official
| government documentation and your real name is definitely
| tracking you in my opinion.
|
| This is nothing unusual? It's extremely common for a private
| company to request identify verification
| freebuju wrote:
| There is no legitimate reason for Facebook, or any other
| social media website, to require a copy of your ID other
| than for purposes of renting your authentic profile to
| advertisers.
| winternett wrote:
| Sure, for a dentist or doctor's visit, it's totally
| reasonable. But if you were asked for your ID every time
| you bought a burger at McDonalds, it would be considered
| suspect and a potential privacy invasion by most.
|
| The same is the case with social media. They don't need
| your government ID, and they're not authorized to demand it
| like the health care industry is.
| frumper wrote:
| Now they can just track the card you used to all your
| purchases, or maybe even facial recognition. ID's aren't
| needed for them to know who you are in many cases.
| nepthar wrote:
| > they're not authorized to demand it like the health
| care industry is.
|
| There is no governing body that determines who is and who
| is not "authorized" to request ID in the United States.
| winternett wrote:
| Yes there is... Congress does it regularly by creating
| and amending laws like HIPAA.
| frumper wrote:
| Which law restricts a business like McDonalds from
| requesting an ID? It sure isn't HIPAA.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| We've already agreed in the TOU for our credit cards that
| the debtor/merchant is entitled to access to information
| about you from your credit card company. It is far more
| intrusive than government ID, yet people freak the fuck
| out about ID but swipe their VISA 10,000 times per
| second.
|
| This is how Scientology tracked me for almost three
| decades even after I changed addresses a dozen times. I
| bought something from them once on Visa, and they
| constantly got updates on my personal info.
|
| How are you OK with VISA and not OK with ID on a social
| media site when the former is far worse than the latter?
|
| We've already given up privacy.
|
| Please help me understand if I'm wrong. I'd like to not
| be so cynical.
| winternett wrote:
| Credit Card industries are regulated by law, the laws are
| weak as well though, and also rarely enforced, so card
| companies can really push boundaries in secretive ways
| with privacy invasion anyway.
|
| In contrast to social media, where there is not any
| substantial regulation yet, it's the wild west with your
| information right now... They can sell your phone number,
| anything saved on your phone, everything you post, and
| even possibly run a keylogger from their mobile app on
| your device...
|
| Mobile (installed) apps can collect precise location data
| on you once you install their app... Credit card
| companies can potentially track you and gather personal
| data as well if you install their (native) mobile app. As
| phones evolve, it will eventually become normal to be
| tracked and to not be able to opt out if regulation
| (laws) aren't made and enforced to protect individuals
| from privacy invasion.
|
| This is why I use web sites instead of installing single-
| use apps, but also why certain companies want to end
| support for browser based sites, and why some services
| can only accessed via installed apps.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > Credit Card industries are regulated by law,
|
| This is a good point. Even though they are ignored, there
| at least is something to use in litigation.
|
| > and even possibly run a keylogger from their mobile app
| on your device...
|
| Like the Emoji apps that were doing this years ago.
|
| > instead of installing single-use apps,
|
| I keep my app use extreeeemmely limited.
|
| We need serious regulation on social media sites that
| collect this much personal information, meaning stuff
| people post that is intended for a very limited,
| controlled audience, and not wall posts that are public
| to everyone. (Like HN.)
|
| I think the problem is what someone pointed out to me
| yesterday: tying DMs to a "real" identity. Purchases are
| already tied to who we are, and so are every form we sign
| that has significance. Phone companies know whos in our
| address books. Email is 100% insecure, always has been.
| The last thing to protect is the DMs.... which is
| probably too late.
| rvnx wrote:
| It's called a loyalty card what you describe
| cratermoon wrote:
| The carrot to get you to sign up for the loyalty card is
| the promise of discount prices. The shelf price says $X,
| but "Members pay just $Y". Of course $Y is closer to the
| true price. Sometimes they'll send out a mailer with
| extra coupons, usually somewhat customized based on your
| past purchases. But now they get to track all your
| activity. This is not nefarious to the extent it's used
| to plan inventory and purchasing, but to the extent that
| your store profile is sold to other companies, it becomes
| nefarious.
|
| A casual reading of the terms and conditions might lead a
| person to object, that it says they don't sell your data.
| A close reading notes that it says they don't sell to
| "third parties". But they leave out the fact that any
| other company the store does business with is _not_ a
| third party. They technically don 't sell your data to
| them, they provide your data to other companies during
| the normal course of transacting business with them.
| Thus, your data flows through the system, unchecked.
| winternett wrote:
| Yes, they make a lot more money off of using and selling
| the data you create than what you save... And they also
| lay you off as a cashier and make you check out and bag
| your own groceries... the future is lookin bleak... lol
| rubylark wrote:
| Is it? Maybe its my unconscious avoidance of industries
| with that practice, but the only other private corporation
| I can think of that has requested my ID is Costco. I can't
| think of a single software service or social media that has
| wanted my ID for anything. On the other hand, Facebook has
| never asked for my ID either, I assume because I have an
| old enough account that I was grandfathered in.
|
| Edit: I thought of two more: airlines and banks. But I
| assume both of those industries are required to by
| regulation.
| input_sh wrote:
| Oh I can think of many others: cryptocurrency exchanges,
| many payment providers, some server providers, Twitter
| (during verification), freelancing platforms (like
| Upwork) and even Pornhub.
|
| Sometimes it's a legal obligation (under KYC), sometimes
| it's pressure from credit card companies, and sometimes
| it's just websites making shit up to enforce their own
| rules.
| winternett wrote:
| Crypto exchanges do it because of mandated government
| income tax reporting requirements and potential for
| payment fraud (also a regulated industry).
|
| Twitter requires ID and personal information (i.e. your
| phone number) for verification even from users that are
| not involved in any sort of purchasing or income
| scenarios.
|
| Reddit started out not caring about who anyone was, but
| over time IP based tracking and other things started to
| creep in...
|
| Private companies that aren't regulated nor involved in
| conducting regulated business should not be asking for
| any government issued ID nor personal user data if you
| ask me.
| winternett wrote:
| In order to be verified on Twitter and YouTube, you need
| to present government ID. I wasn't talking about FaceBook
| in that reference. FaceBook's algorithm likely verifies
| people over time based on requiring their actual
| (government record) name versus the content in their
| posts, possibly combined with facial recognition from
| posted photos and family associations.
|
| I always chose to never use my real name on any social
| media accounts, if it was required I'd probably elect to
| not sign up, but their EULAs frequently are revised to
| serve whatever purpose they want because there is no
| meaningful regulation in place to limit their data mining
| practices on pretty much anyone because others post info
| about you in some way over time, even if you don't have
| an account.
| classified wrote:
| They lie about everything else, why would this be different?
| sgregnt wrote:
| How this exageration contributes to a discussion here? It is
| very popular now to bash facebook. This kind of herd
| conformism and unsubstantiated claims are harming hacker news
| community in my humble opinion.
|
| If you do not bring new evidence or ideas, please refrain
| from exaggerated accusations.
| demygale wrote:
| All discussions about Facebook must include a reminder that
| they lie about everything. Pretending that they are
| trustworthy or reliable is disingenuous. Truths about
| Facebook's lying can't be repeated enough.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Ah please. It can easily be found in the record that almost
| every statement made by Facebook is a lie or not truthful.
| Just one influential for me is the promise not to do
| anything with WhatsApp and Facebook. Incredibly naive at
| the time to approve that acquisition on the pinky swear
| they'd hold their word. At this stage I'm astounded by any
| official taking the word of Facebook. Their incentives to
| spin are insurmountable.
| j2bax wrote:
| //Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe.
|
| Are you saying that Facebook doesn't enable full account delete
| outside of countries that require it by law?
| IlPeach wrote:
| Would you be surprised?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete
| even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they
| brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow.
| 1024core wrote:
| So why are there no consequences? Why isn't there a red
| corner Interpol arrest warrant for Zuck out?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The regulators who are supposed to enforce the GDPR are
| either incompetent or unwilling to do so. I suspect there
| might be political problems with stepping up enforcement
| considering a lot of politicians rely on social media &
| ads (which is powered by non-consensual data processing)
| to help with their (re)-election.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Because the US government wants to maintain access to FBs
| data. Shutting down FB would be a big blow to
| surveillance, hence they will never do anything serious
| against it. They'll just put on a show, scream publicly
| in outrage about what FB does or whatever, and then
| nothing substantial will come out of it, because they
| never intended to do anything in the first place.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >There's no reason to believe it's a "full" account delete
| even in the countries covered by the GDPR considering they
| brazenly breach the GDPR with their "consent" flow.
|
| Given FB's business model, and the fact that they create
| "shadow" profiles for folks who don't even have FB
| accounts, I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend
| that your account has been "deleted", all the data still
| exists for their use.
|
| Which is why, when I left Facebook in 2014, rather than
| attempting to delete or disable the account, I posted a
| goodbye to those on FB that I cared about and explained
| exactly why I was leaving (their predatory and invasive
| business model).
|
| I then logged out and haven't returned. I did this because
| I figured that _any_ activity on their platform would be
| logged and stored with everything else they 'd already
| collected.
|
| And that was seven years ago. Given what we've seen from
| them since then, it's pretty clear that I was right.
|
| Just go away and don't look back. Otherwise you'll just
| give them more data.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > I have no doubt that while their UI might pretend that
| your account has been "deleted", all the data still
| exists for their use.
|
| They don't even have to pretend to delete your account,
| they can actually delete it. But through some linguistic
| slight-of-hand (i.e., lying) they obscure the fact that
| your account is not all the data they have on you. Your
| "account", in a strict sense might just be your username
| and password. It happens to also be associated with the
| entire pile of data that is a profile. Once a user no
| longer has an account, it's what you call a "shadow
| profile".
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >They don't even have to pretend to delete your account,
| they can actually delete it. But through some linguistic
| slight-of-hand (i.e., lying) they obscure the fact that
| your account is not all the data they have on you. Your
| "account", in a strict sense might just be your username
| and password. It happens to also be associated with the
| entire pile of data that is a profile. Once a user no
| longer has an account, it's what you call a "shadow
| profile".
|
| A likely scenario. Although I'd say that removing a
| userid and password from their auth db doesn't qualify as
| "deleting" an account. Rather, that's _disabling_ an
| account. And IIUC (I 'm not in the EU and not familiar
| with all the details) the GDPR/EU privacy folks would
| likely agree with that assessment too.
|
| Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the GDPR could
| weigh in on what sorts of fines _could_ be levied against
| Facebook for pulling a stunt like that on European
| citizens?
|
| Edit: Levied is a more accurate term than "leveled".
| swamp-agr wrote:
| From data modelling point of view it's a challenge to wipe
| the user data since it will affect a social graph. And
| there're different strategies to handle corner cases (e.g.
| how to deal with reactions/replies on "deleted" comments or
| with reactions on your photos or your reactions on
| different news, mark as deleted and wipe the content or
| completely remove nested graph). And it actually makes user
| tracking much harder (please keep in mind, they're tracking
| users that have not register yet, in that case user profile
| might be converted from one user type to another if they
| are going to continue track you (why didn't want that?)).
|
| It might be much easier to extend account entity with
| something like:
|
| - is_deleted (boolean)
|
| - deleted_time (utctime)
|
| - is_suing_us (boolean)
|
| - legal_case_id ...
| dleslie wrote:
| This all seems to be problems for them surveillance
| capitalist, and not the user.
| sgregnt wrote:
| Is facebook here different than other apps? If you
| publically post something on internet, good luck trying
| to delete it...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Facebook collects way more data than what you choose to
| publish. Not to mention, if you want to delete something,
| _Facebook_ should delete it. Whether other third-parties
| archive it is beyond scope.
| avs733 wrote:
| exactly...I regularly see arguments about how technical
| compliance with laws or user wishes as 'its hard' as if
| 'hard' is a counter argument to compliance...
| TomSwirly wrote:
| They flout the GDPR, so why wouldn't they flout this?
| Gulfick wrote:
| Looks like I'll be on Facebook forever.
| swamp-agr wrote:
| I don't know
|
| - whether they partially disable functions on purpose
|
| - or there are region-dependant backend code errors.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| There is, you basically spend a year rewriting your profile
| step by step with garbage data. Then delete the garbage posts
| and replace them with other stuff. It's long and it takes
| effort.
|
| I assume that when you do it all at once they will just disable
| you and keep the old snapshot in their facebook graph.
| davidjytang wrote:
| I tried to download my Facebook data once and found that it
| had all my ancient and deleted posts, ancient relationship
| status, ancient cities of dwelling, etc.
|
| Anyway how would filling in garbage help in deleting Facebook
| account?
| _0ffh wrote:
| I think the idea is to seed mistrust in the data because
| there is no way to distinguish between the genuine and the
| fake data you put on your account. So the fake data makes
| the genuine practically useless.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Exactly. Taking it to the next level, leave your own
| tracking info in the fakery, e.g. "favorite vacation:
| France". Then if someone cold-spams you with tickets to
| Paris, you'll know why.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Maybe a better idea would be to actively go against the Terms
| of Service for FB and obfuscate the data in your account
|
| - Remove all photos and replace them with other images (nothing
| illegal)
|
| - Change all data relating to your person
|
| - Create several posts with unrelated data
|
| - Like as many pages as you possibly can
| a_imho wrote:
| Exactly. Deleting is giving up control over your account.
| kelnos wrote:
| I do wonder if manually deleting everything: every post, every
| photo, every comment, every interaction, will actually delete
| things behind the scenes, or if FB keeps everything regardless.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The problem is that fundamentally, to Facebook, a user's login
| account is a separate thing from the user's profile. You can
| delete your _account_ , and with a straight face Facebook can
| assert you've deleted it. But your _profile_ , the mass of data
| and content that you put on Facebook with your account, and all
| the data associated with it through their social graph and
| algorithms, that never gets deleted.
|
| In a very real sense, "you" still exist in Facebook. That's why
| when, weeks, months, or years later, when you login, Facebook
| recognizes you. You create a new "account", and Facebook very
| conveniently associates everything it knows about you (which it
| never forgot) with your new account.
| fakedang wrote:
| I tested this quite recently actually. I typed my Facebook
| password to login with all sorts of mistakes, although the
| core part of it remains the same, with some minor changes
| (all caps, a capital letter, an extra character, etc). In all
| cases the passwords were accepted.
|
| Which leads me to think that Facebook passwords might just be
| stored as searchable text rather than hashes. Granted I'm no
| cryptography expert though.
| e12e wrote:
| > Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe.
|
| Technically, with GDPR you only need to visit the EU to delete
| your account... So I suppose one might a vacation out of
| deleting Facebook, LinkedIn etc accounts?
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| I guess this page monthly hits serve as input for some KPI for
| their PR dept.
| burnt_toast wrote:
| I recently shut down a small business and have been having
| nothing but trouble trying to remove it's presence online.
|
| Facebook made me wait two weeks before giving me the option to
| delete it and now it's just stuck on "deleting". Bing emails me
| weekly saying I need to update my listing yet I've tried 3 times
| to mark it as closed to no avail.
|
| The only one I've been able to remove it from has been Google so
| far. It's quite frustrating.
| Program_Install wrote:
| I wish more people would consider the deletion of facebooks from
| their lives. It has become the most dangerous form of SkyNet, and
| most voluntarily hand their lives to them. Nothing worse than
| idiots attempting to make themselves relevant for no reason other
| than trying to be relevant.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Companies tracking and profiting from your every move are
| everywhere. If you're not live-blogging your entire life on
| Facebook it's really quite far from the worst offender in the
| surveillance economy.
| black_13 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten I wish this
| was something that was a universal right. Not just for social
| media but truly have a right to privacy.
| Pinegulf wrote:
| Isn't 'delete' a bit misleading? The page does not say that whey
| would delete your data, only 'account'.
| cascom wrote:
| Why would I want to delete my Facebook account?
|
| I abhor Facebook, I never log on, I haven't used WhatsApp or
| Facebook messenger, etc. for several years, So I don't feel like
| I'm giving them any information, but deleting my account only
| hurts me by giving away a free option? What am I missing?
| VLM wrote:
| The way to fight people who advise to use FB less or just don't
| login and scroll all day long, is to reframe the problem as an
| extremist binary choice, either use FB three hours per day
| every day or go to huge effort to delete everything. Most
| people will choose the less extreme of the "binary" options of
| continuing to use FB. Its a common sophistry trick.
| tremon wrote:
| You're adding to Facebook's network value by having a Facebook
| presence, however minimal you deem it to be. You're inducing
| other people into giving Facebook information on them by
| maintaining a Facebook account.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Isn't this why they consider Daily/Monthly Active Users and
| not just accounts? If I have a Facebook account that I never
| log in to, I'm upping their count of users, sure, but not the
| DAU/MAU count, which is what marketers care about for reach.
| baby wrote:
| Lost friends because they deleted their Facebook and I can't
| reach them anymore :(
| sfblah wrote:
| I think I'd rather have a script I could put on a Raspberry Pi
| that periodically did actions on their site or via APIs to waste
| their computing power. If a few million people did that, it might
| make a difference. Sure, they'd try to block it, but maintainers
| could evolve the software, like ad blockers do.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| I got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago.
| Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp
| really think you're weird for not having it.
|
| Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted
| in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram -- the network
| effect can be broken by being belligerent.
|
| If you don't want to have a conversation about why you deleted
| WhatsApp, simply say it's a moral issue, nobody wants to know.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > If you don't want to have a conversation about why you
| deleted WhatsApp, simply say it's a moral issue, nobody wants
| to know.
|
| Is this really true? I do a smattering of weird/non-conformist
| things for moral reasons, and people are always _overly_
| interested. IME, if you say "I don't do X for moral reasons" to
| someone who does X, they take it as a personal attack. It's
| closely related to the concept of "anticipated reproach". While
| they may pay lip service to it, most people aren't
| fundamentally able to understand the concept of moral
| pluralism/relativism, and won't be satisfied with "I think it's
| wrong but it's no black mark on you if you don't think it is".
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| Maybe I'm just old or out of it? I've never used WhatsApp and
| don't see why I would need any chat apps other than just normal
| texting on my iPhone.
| mgarciaisaia wrote:
| It's not that you're old - you simply are not that poor.
|
| WhatsApp first value proposition has been to enable cheap
| ("free") messaging while, at least here in Argentina, SMS
| would still cost a lot of money. The Android SMS experience
| is bad, too - or at least it's not a nice one.
|
| Add groups, multimedia, audio calls with no long-distance
| fee, or even video calls (I don't think the phone system
| offers an alternative, at least here), and all of that being
| "cross-manufacturer" (we have 92% Android users here, so you
| still don't want to leave your two iOS friends out) and it's
| pretty much clear _why_ WhatsApp works best.
|
| Signal & Telegram could have make it, too - but WhatsApp was
| probably first, and they offered support for some feature
| phones back then when they still were around.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Is the problem that a lot of non-US mobile providers don't
| include SMS for free?
|
| I'm probably showing my ignorance around SMS and iMessage, but
| why can't SMS simply use your data allowance? Doesn't iMessage
| do this?
| mimentum wrote:
| SMS runs through a different protocol and has different set
| standards; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS
|
| iMessage is a proprietary messaging system
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Any idea why so many providers charge for SMS?
| kelnos wrote:
| Simply put, because they can. They may have a monopoly or
| near-monopoly on SMS service, so they can do what they
| want.
|
| That was the state of affairs in the US until fairly
| recently; most carriers (in the US at least) offer a
| pretty standard plan that includes unlimited texting.
| asdff wrote:
| Do you live outside the US? I always hear how popular WhatsApp
| is on here but honestly I don't know a single person who uses
| that app in the US. Or any chat platform for that matter.
| Everyone just texts and calls at least in my younger millenial
| circle. I guess in other countries they still charge for texts
| and calls like its 2002 and maybe WhatsApp is more popular
| there to get around paying for each text message?
| kelnos wrote:
| I live in the US, and there are 4 or 5 people I talk to via
| WhatsApp as our primary communications channel. I'm also a
| member of 2 or 3 group chats that are used occasionally that
| I get value out of. I managed to move one group chat over to
| Signal, but the others didn't budge. I also find that
| WhatsApp is often the go-to for short-term ad-hoc group
| chats, like for a bunch of people who are on a trip or
| vacation together.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Deleting WhatsApp, [...], has resulted in many people I know
| joining Signal or Telegram -- the network effect can be broken
| by being belligerent._
|
| This practical application of your advice _depends on where a
| particular person sits in their social hierarchy_.
|
| E.g. an influential person that's a "hub" or "connector" in
| their social circle can switch from WhatsApp to Signal ... or
| insist on email only ... or insist on no email and only
| hardcopy snail mail (Donald Knuth) -- and others will follow
| their lead or accommodate them.
|
| On the other hand, if you're one of the folks at the "spokes"
| or "edges" of social graphs... being defiant by deleting
| WhatsApp doesn't accomplish anything because others don't care
| to switch to reach you.
|
| The above difference in social influence happens in Asia
| countries where many use WhatsApp beyond personal relationships
| for business to sell items or find work. If the business
| contacts you depend on for getting income use WhatsApp, you
| deleting WhatsApp just means you get $0 because they'd rather
| deal with other vendors who don't force them the hassle of
| switching to Signal. Power and leverage in social graphs
| matter.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| This is an excellent point.
|
| I'm no influencer, but i do have a big family and lots of
| very close friends. I'm very lucky.
|
| Many people are isolated and struggle to make and maintain
| friendships -- especially over the last year. They don't have
| the luxury of being able to take a stand.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >being defiant by deleting WhatsApp doesn't accomplish
| anything because others don't care to switch to reach you.
|
| I disagree. It accomplishes at least one thing -- WhatsApp
| isn't tracking/recording _your_ messages any more. That 's
| what _I_ would care about.
| MadWombat wrote:
| So you prevent them from recording your conversations with
| friends by having no conversations and no friends.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >So you prevent them from recording your conversations
| with friends by having no conversations and no friends.
|
| You're absolutely right. Because there's no such thing as
| other messaging apps, email, social media platforms,
| SMS/MMS, telephone, written correspondence or discussion
| over a beer/coffee/meal. Only WhatsApp exists.
|
| Gee, I wish someone would invent some or all of of those
| things -- I'm _so_ lonely! /s
| raxxorrax wrote:
| > because others don't care to switch to reach you.
|
| I don't think it is worth holding contact in that case.
| Contrary to popular belief is that you don't miss out on
| anything.
|
| Business contacts are another matter, but every professional
| understands if you want to use other channels. Same principle
| applies. If they don't make the effort, it wasn't a good
| contact anyway, although there are side effects because
| convinience is important. A bit of excentricity isn't a deal
| breaker, on the contrary.
|
| Clout chasing is exactly the angle social media tries to
| satisfy.
| jasode wrote:
| _> I don't think it is worth holding contact in that case.
| _
|
| That's a common counterargument that's similar to _" then I
| guess they weren't very good friends, were they?!?"_ -- but
| oversimplifies the complexity of social life. It's not a
| simple binary dichotomy between "very good friends" and "no
| friends".
|
| People also have an in-between status of _" weak ties"_
| that are mutually beneficial :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_ties
|
| These types of relationships are more fragile and easier to
| "lose" by putting up barriers to communication. It's not
| realistic to impose a condition of _" either you follow me
| to the Signal network or you weren't really my friend at
| all"_ on the whole world. Everybody doesn't have same
| weight of importance to everyone else and that's ok.
| Dunbar's Number may also be relevant here.
|
| _> , but every professional understands if you want to use
| other channels._
|
| No they don't if you're one of hundreds of "disposable
| vendors" in Asia or other parts of the world using WhatsApp
| for business. The other business professional (with more
| leverage) just ignores your excentricity and works with
| others who don't inconvenience them.
|
| _> , although there are side effects _
|
| If the "side effects" are $0 income, that's a really big
| deal. It seems like you swept this aside.
|
| _> Clout chasing _
|
| It's not about about chasing "clout". Unfortunately, I used
| the word "influential" and I forgot that it has been
| tainted by recent phenomenon of "social media influencer".
| I couldn't think of a better word for "significant
| connector node on a social graph" other than "influential".
| (I think it's irony that by Donald Knuth insisting on USPS
| snail mail for correspondence -- and people actually
| getting past that friction to contact him -- that actually
| _proves_ he has clout.)
|
| In any case, I think your perspective is shaped by your
| experience in Western Europe so you really can't empathize
| with how some people (farmers, etc) _depend_ on WhatsApp
| for their livelihood. They don 't use it like a TikTok type
| of social network.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Remember Klout?
| badRNG wrote:
| You aren't asking your contacts to delete WhatsApp as well in
| solidarity or to fully "switch", you are asking them to
| simply use Signal to communicate with you. If you mention you
| are uncomfortable using WhatsApp, and they aren't willing to
| use Signal to message you, they likely aren't worth talking
| to.
|
| I deleted Facebook/Messenger awhile ago, and asked that
| people use Signal to communicate with me. All of the people I
| cared to speak to use Signal to message me, and many of them
| have used it for other purposes as well. That hasn't
| precluded them from using whatever they were using before.
| This only applies to the personal sphere of my life,
| conducting business with WhatsApp may be a different issue
| entirely.
| xtracto wrote:
| I find Whats App to be the easiest of the 3: Whoever has
| WhatsApp has a mobile phone. So, it's just a matter of sending
| them SMS instead of WhatsApp. The odd situation is when
| contacting companies via WhatsApp, but most companies usually
| have alternative methods of contact.
| orangepanda wrote:
| > Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has
| resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram --
| the network effect can be broken by being belligerent.
|
| Network effect is irrelevant for pure messaging services. If
| someone needs to talk to you, they'll send a pigeon if they
| have to.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| Which messaging app do you think most people would join...
| one with nobody else using it, or one with everyone else
| using?
| lopis wrote:
| You underestimate the power of convenience. It doesn't bother
| me much, but I've lost friends because we couldn't keep in
| touch anywhere other than facebook and whatsapp. Eventually,
| anyone can stop needing to talk to you.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >You underestimate the power of convenience. It doesn't
| bother me much, but I've lost friends because we couldn't
| keep in touch anywhere other than facebook and whatsapp.
| Eventually, anyone can stop needing to talk to you.
|
| Then I guess they weren't very good friends, were they? If
| they were, they might make an effort, no?
| kelnos wrote:
| Perhaps not, but often there's value in maintaining
| casual friendships.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Perhaps not, but often there's value in maintaining
| casual friendships.
|
| A good point. I can't (and don't pretend to) speak for
| anyone else, but I want to be around people who want to
| be around me. And not all of those.
|
| Take from that what you will.
| dmead wrote:
| I don't understand how telegram is less immoral than Facebook.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| Because it doesn't collect personal data to sell to
| advertisers.
| fsckboy wrote:
| Facebook is a monopolist, Telegram is not
| dotancohen wrote:
| I could have written this comment word for word.
|
| People get _offended_ when you tell them that you don't have
| Whatsapp. But I let them hold that hot coal themselves.
| pacija wrote:
| How _dare_ they not having xmpp and matrix accounts while I,
| the real mensch, selfhost both _servers_.
|
| And what's with all the downmods and downright flags lately?
| I'm trying to be funny here.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| No humor allowed. HN is srs bsns
| strken wrote:
| Generally it's no zippy one-liner putdowns, more than no
| humour. I think the general idea is that if you want to
| criticise something, you should directly write out an
| argument against it.
|
| In this case the joke wasn't even related to the
| discussion, since neither Signal[0] nor Telegram are
| self-hosted anyway.
|
| [0] You can sort of self-host Signal, but last time I
| looked there was no way to change the URL in the client
| without rebuilding it, and it's not federated, so that's
| pretty pointless unless you also get all your friends to
| install your new version too.
| pacija wrote:
| Some people are shallower and less humorous than the
| others, and can't get the reference and joke where others
| can. I am fine with that, not that I want to be king of
| HN with best karma of them all. I just like to hang
| around bright humorous people, not shallow smugs.
|
| The discussion was about some people getting offended
| because some other people don't have whatsapp accounts.
|
| I selfhost xmpp (ejabberd) and matrix (synapse) servers
| for my friends and family. When someone asks - and this
| happens fairly often - how come I don't have [insert evil
| big tech IM company here] account, and how can I be
| contacted, I say I can be contacted by means of open
| federated protocol like xmpp or matrix, using open source
| apps like conversations or element, having account on one
| of many xmpp or matrix servers, including ones that I
| administer.
|
| Most people say 'ok whatever man', but some say tell me
| more and get to get in touch with me.
|
| Because of my knowledge and skill to avoid Evil Greed,
| and because I am actively working on liberating people
| from it, I think of myself as a better man than those who
| argue whether Signal is better than WhatsApp or Viber or
| whatever. And at the same time I remind myself I am no
| better than anyone or anything else in the Universe. And
| I am quite auto-ironic about it.
|
| Is this enough lines of explanation?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| On the contrary. HN loves humor. You just need to put
| some effort into it (or get lucky with timing).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Eh, I think it is a good rule personally. At least for
| reddit-style low-effort one liner humor, not that I
| haven't been guilty of posting that myself.
| zionic wrote:
| This is so strange, no one in my social circle uses WhatsApp
| or has ever asked me to use it to talk to them. It's all
| iMessage, Snapchat, and a growing group of people on Signal.
| emerged wrote:
| Same here, I've never even heard someone I know say the
| word "WhatsApp" in my life.
| lucasverra wrote:
| Usa?
|
| Cause what parent described is common in EU + LATAM
| tonylemesmer wrote:
| I tried to precipiate a shift away from Whatsapp the last
| time they did a privacy grab a year or two ago. But so many
| people use it for group messaging. The gravity around
| Whatsapp is enough to prevent people swapping to Signal in
| my circles.
|
| Now I've got so many messaging apps. I just want one. Only
| one.
|
| (based in the UK)
| Flashtoo wrote:
| I assume you're in the US. In most of Europe Whatsapp is
| the main communication platform. SMS is dead and Android is
| more popular than iOS, so no iMessage either.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| Understandably, people who don't use WhatsApp, don't think
| it's weird that other people don't use WhatsApp.
|
| People who do have WhatsApp, probably have it, because most
| of the people they know have it.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Messaging clients tend to be regional. WhatsApp is massive
| in Europe. From what I gather WeChat is dominant in
| mainland China but Hong Kong still used WhatsApp (though I
| think they might be coming round to Signal?) and the US,
| who have a higher ratio of Apple users vs the rest of the
| world, tend to use iMessage a lot more.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Interoperability between these systems should be a public
| policy goal. I don't have to buy an AT&T phone anymore to
| call my friends; not sure why I have to buy iOS to chat
| with them.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I agree with you but this is a problem that date backs to
| the 90s (anyone remember Bitlbee, Trillion, Pidgeon,
| etc?). Unfortunately incompatibility is seen by
| businesses a feature rather than a flaw -- despite the
| annoyances it causes for users.
| sbarre wrote:
| At one point the US Govt did mandate interoperability on
| AOL Messenger, once it became the dominant platform.
|
| So there is precedent for this, but we live in very
| different times now.
| zaik wrote:
| What if we made a Internet Standard for messaging and
| presence?
| javagram wrote:
| SMS, MMS, and RCS are examples of such standards,
| although only SMS/MMS have full support on both iphone
| and android.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| There's been a few open standards. The problem isn't that
| standards exist, it's that walled gardens are generally
| more profitable.
|
| In fact Google Talk, Facebook Messenger and Skype were
| all either based upon, or supported XMPP...and now don't.
| Slack used to support IRC and not doesn't. There's a term
| often credited to Microsoft that also applies here:
| embrace, extend, extinguish.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >What if we made a Internet Standard for messaging and
| presence?
|
| That's a wonderful idea. In fact, we've had such a
| standard since 1999 (protocol codified in 2004[0])
|
| It's called XMPP[1]
|
| [0] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3920.txt
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP
| wtetzner wrote:
| Not only that, but a lot of closed messaging platforms
| were originally built on XMPP.
| scbrg wrote:
| Interoperability is tricky when one set of apps has end
| to end encryption as a requirement, and the other set has
| absence of end to end encryption as a requirement.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Then again, I've kinda given up on email privacy since at
| least half of my emails go to Google's servers anyway.
| I'm not sure if we can avoid Facebook having my IP
| address (or whatever future attack vectors are found
| after the protocol has been standardised) if I message
| WhatsApp users from my Signal account.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't mind the interoperability. Take email for
| example. Even if you avoid Gmail/Google, so many people
| do, so Googs eventually gets your email anyway. So we
| chat, even if you don't use FB, if someone you chat with
| does, they still get that conversation. So the
| interoperability provides a buffer or insulator between
| you and the company you are wanting to avoid.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > WhatsApp is massive in Europe.
|
| You're completely right that messaging clients is
| regional, but it's even more regional than just "Europe".
| I'm always confused when people claim that WhatsApp is
| huge in Europe, because I know literally only two people
| who use it. They only use WhatsApp because they have
| friends outside Europe.
|
| I think we need to think in terms of single countries
| when talking messaging apps. Again take WhatsApp. Pretty
| big in Germany and Spain, but almost non-existing in
| Denmark (who instead rely more on Facebook Messenger or
| iMessage).
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| It's nr 1 in Germany UK Spain Italy Portugal Switzerland
| Austria Belgium Netherlands Norway Greece. That's like
| 90% of Europe.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It can depend a lot on where in the world you and your
| friend group are or are from. It's quite popular with the
| Indian H1B contractors in my office in the US for example
| but not too many of my US friends use it. Same story with
| my fiance and her lab groups which have a lot of European
| grad students and post docs, it's quite common there too.
| emptyfile wrote:
| I don't even know what iMessage is.
| Macha wrote:
| Something something american teenagers bubble colours?
| egypturnash wrote:
| Apple's SMS/IM client. Only available on Apple operating
| systems.
| saberience wrote:
| In the UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc), it's almost impossible
| to live without WhatsApp since almost every business does
| customer support using it.
|
| Want to get a delivery? You'll be told about it via
| WhatsApp. Want to order food online? WhatsApp. Want to pick
| up your laundry? WhatsApp. etc. It's everywhere here and
| totally dominant. Deciding not to use it would make your
| life significantly harder.
| toto444 wrote:
| I have (and have always had) a dumb phone so obviously no
| Whatsapp. I don't really undertstand its appeal. Being part
| of tens of groups that sends you notifications constantly
| because someone's posted a picture of their cat but you don't
| leave not to offend anyone does not sound a cool thing to me.
|
| If people need to send me some information they text me. If
| sending a text is too much for them maybe I did not really
| need to know what they wanted to send. If I want to
| communicate with my friends and family I call them like we
| used to do in the 20th century.
| nicbou wrote:
| In Europe, people just assume that you have it. I often get the
| first contact from pensions and airbnbs on WhatsApp. I
| convinced a few people to switch to Telegram, but there are
| still a few stragglers on WhatsApp and even Facebook Messenger.
| Pawka wrote:
| I'd say in parts of Europe. E.g. in Slavic regions Telegram
| is popular. In other regions Signal. Among my circles FB
| messenger seems to be the most popular.
| throwaway525142 wrote:
| I believe Telegram is inferior to WhatsApp due to missing
| default end-to-end encryption.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| It is sadly very common in western europe, but you can easily
| live without it too.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| I mostly agree with your comment, having deleted WhatsApp
| myself this spring. However I have a problem with that.
|
| > many people I know joining Signal or Telegram -- the network
| effect can be broken by being belligerent
|
| Did you not _use_ the same network effect to get people to join
| Signal /Telegram? While I agree that Signal is morally better
| (being a non-profit and all), it is still a closed garden,
| which makes such network effects possible. And this in itself
| is a moral issue, I think. Personally I would like to use a
| system like, where everyone can choose his own server. But
| nobody in my social circle uses it, so I'm stuck with walled
| gardens...
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| My issue is with Facebook, not with the network effect
| itself. Happy to use the network effect to get people off
| Facebook.
| jakecopp wrote:
| Get them onto Element, it's brilliant! [1]. Matrix is an
| aggressively open garden - it even bridges to other social
| networks [2].
|
| [1]: https://element.io/
|
| [2]: https://matrix.org/bridges/
| arnoooooo wrote:
| I would not call Element brilliant. I have had a hard time
| getting others to adopt it. Fluffychat (Matrix client as
| well) is more user-friendly.
| asdff wrote:
| IRC never went anywhere, you aren't stuck.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Use mautrix-whatsapp [1] on a home server to bridge Matrix chat
| to WhatsApp and (optionally) add a dedicated VoIP phone number
| for WhatApp.
|
| Allows you to connect to/chat with WhatApp users using
| Matrix/Element.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp
| lucasverra wrote:
| how to ping you to know a bit more of that experience ?
| chagaif wrote:
| I have also been using this for nearly a year now, you can
| reach me at https://chagai.website
| nisegami wrote:
| Not GP commenter, but I suspect you're mistaking a functional
| issue (not wanting to use Whatsapp's applications) from a
| moral issue (not wanting to use the Whatsapp platform).
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Somewhat you are right - but it is difficult to
| differentiate between the two: I don't want to use Whatsapp
| for moral issues, but I also a) don't want to loose
| connections to people who still use the platform and b) I
| don't believe in actiely convincing peole of anything. They
| have to reach these conclusions themselves - until then, I
| can choose mautrix to stay connected, limiting my
| interaction with the platform to the bare minimum.
| croh wrote:
| Why isnt it possible to delete amazon account permanently ?
| Amazon still doesn't give option to delete purchase history
| which is kind of super annoying.
| Traster wrote:
| I think Amazon is actually a different story to a certain
| extent. Sure, you can delete your account, but at the end of
| the day you've transacted with them and they can keep a
| record of who they've transacted with, right? Personally I
| think it would be unreasonable for me to demand that a shop I
| buy from delete the record of who purchased it.
| malka wrote:
| > I think it would be unreasonable for me to demand that a
| shop I buy from delete the record of who purchased it.
|
| Why ? for recent transaction, they need to keep it for tax
| purposes but they have no legal need to keep old records.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| In some countries, they need to keep it for 10 years for
| tax and audit reasons.
|
| I wouldn't call 10 years "recent transactions". Heck, for
| most of the online shops, it's more like "forever".
| Sosh101 wrote:
| Which countries?
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think "need" matters here. They have a record of
| a transaction, and they want to keep that record. I don't
| think I have a right to demand that they delete that
| data.
|
| The GDPR/CCPA/etc. likely has different requirements
| here, and probably requires deletion after they're no
| longer needed (for tax purposes or whatever).
|
| But I personally have financial records going back
| decades, so I can't fault a company for wanting to do the
| same thing.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| Also at least in the EU you're legally mandated to keep
| transaction history along with customer information for
| some number of years iirc. Don't know how that combines
| with gdpr.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Actually the GDPR is very clear about this.[0] Instead of
| setting an arbitrary limit, it says it should be the
| shortest period necessary in the context of other laws
| and requirements. So if you need to keep the records for
| 5 years for tax reasons, you should delete them after 5
| years.
|
| [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-
| protection/refo...
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying + supplying references :)
| orwin wrote:
| Yes, and one of the cost of the implementation was
| actually the justification of keeping data, and
| segregating said data. We had some data we could keep 10
| years, some (most) only two, some had to be deleted once
| the client left.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| Because Amazon still has to have a record of the purchase.
| It's part of routine recordkeeping laws while running a
| business.
|
| They could unlink it from your purchase history, but they
| would still have to maintain the record of the purchase. I
| believe this is effectively what 'Archiving' order does.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I'm hard boycotting Facebook now. I've never had an account with
| them and only used WhatsApp, but stopped using that a while ago.
| Used to enjoy my Oculus Rift, sold it when the forced account
| merging was announced and bought an Index to replace it. I was at
| a conference today and skipped a talk by a Facebook engineer. As
| petty as it sounds, I'm staying clear of anyone or anything
| associated with FB. Everyone working for them is complicit.
| usefulcat wrote:
| My first thought was immediately "first, build a time machine.."
| [deleted]
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| Does FB still attempt to Guilt you when you try to quit, e.g.,
| showing 5 pictures of your Friends saying that your friends will
| "miss you" ?
|
| Brandon will miss you. Catherine will miss you. David will miss
| you. Kevin will miss you. Sarah will miss you.
| [deleted]
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I am curious as to what happens to the data.
|
| This is why we need whistleblowers. It could be very easy for
| Facebook to knowingly keep this information and just make it a
| trade secret. The risk of being exposed for lying probably
| doesn't matter since there are so many ways around it without
| "lying".
|
| But who am I kidding. I would love to know which private company
| has the most personal info:
|
| - Lexis Nexis,
|
| - West Law,
|
| - Cellphone companies,
|
| - TRW (credit rating companies)
|
| - VISA (Amex, Mastercard), or
|
| - Facebook
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I actually ended up creating a new Facebook account, with fake
| name/details and no friends. Most of the local information for
| the village I live in, and the surrounding ones is posted and
| discussed on Facebook.
|
| So, if we want to join in on the Halloween trail, need to know
| about it on there. Christmas window displays? Yep, on Facebook.
|
| It's kinda annoying, and I figure they probably know who I am -
| but at least I'm not directly giving them info :/
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