
Mark Zuckerberg Promised a Clear History Tool Almost a Year Ago - jmsflknr
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-privacy-optics-clear-history-zuckerberg
======
donquichotte
Also, the "View As" functionality has been "temporarily" disabled months ago
because of a security issue, never to appear again.

"View As" was a vital tool to assess what data is shared with whom, and
guarding one's privacy is harder without it.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I even just wish they had a simpler "View As non-friend" feature.

~~~
rhizome
I wouldn't be surprised if FB doesn't have a concept of "non-friend." People
are either friends or friends you haven't met yet.

~~~
anticensor
FB does have a concept of enemy, though. Which is implemented as communication
embargo.

~~~
acct1771
Nah, those are "old friends".

~~~
anticensor
You can also block people who are not your friends.

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elamje
Taking the approach of a scientist, i.e. a data scientist, this is a hard
problem to solve. Not only does Facebook have to implement the simple
user.delete.all.data(), but think about the number of internal products that
are machine learning based. In order to preserve the usefulness of those
models and the hundreds of millions in R&D spent to develop them, you have to
carefully understand exactly what products and algos will be affected by just
deleting a single record.

The sheer number of records per user is probably astounding, and facebook has
to figure out a way to understand exactly how thousands of records per user,
being deleted, will affect it's models.

Thought experiment: Imagine, all of the hacker news community and other
privacy minded people go right into the tool and delete everything. That is an
entire community and classification of people that facebook has to figure out
how to reconcile the loss of data for, and fix its machine learning models.
The difficult part is since so much current AI logic is based on historical
data, a user deleting data, will be nearly impossible to untrain from the
model.

I know there are more nuances here, but I think there are some challenges
Facebook has in implementing this, and business wise it's a drain on resources
that will hurt them. It's easy to think it would be so simple for FB to just
call user.delete.all.data(), but the reality is the loss of data could
seriously mess up their algos.

~~~
gerbilly
> In order to preserve the usefulness of those models and the hundreds of
> millions in R&D spent to develop them, you have to carefully understand
> exactly what products and algos will be affected by just deleting a single
> record.

My answer to that is 'who cares?'

It's not my problem, let me delete all my data.

In fact it's required by law in some places.

~~~
Calib3r
Exactly. The ability to delete user data should have been something engineered
from the ground up. They are paying the penalty of technical debt and
hopefully learning some tough lessons.

------
andy_ppp
Can I propose that we start on a "noise" tool/browser plugin for these
suveillance captialism companies? Not only would this be very interesting to
implement it woud help to mess up their profitability by training the
algorithm in arbitrary stuff that no-one is interested in.

It seems more sensible than trying to block them - instead give them loads of
bad data ruining their business model?

For instance you could pick which set of noise you wanted to feed Google i.e.
convince Google you are single mother from Lithuania... or Facebook you're a
63 year old man from Italy or Instagram you are a Teenager from Korea.

Every time a tracker or data point is sent to them to "know" you it could be a
lie. This would lead you out of your search bubble too so political ads by
Russians being bought to undermine Hillary's black vote might be more clear to
everyone.

Trusting Facebook or Google to do the right thing against their financial
interest won't work will it.

~~~
efsavage
If you don't like Facebook/Google/etc., wouldn't you be better off just not
using them rather than spending time trying to hurt them? How will data
vandalism make your life better?

~~~
the_snooze
You can't meaningfully opt out of Facebook/Google/etc. They're embedded in
tons of websites, and your friends will almost certainly give your information
to those companies.

~~~
efsavage
You can block trackers pretty easily, or just not visit those websites. You'll
probably be a happier person if you just don't visit foo.com than spending any
portion of your brief time on Earth trying to trick an ML model into thinking
you're a single mother from Lithuania.

Also, if your friend gives someone else information about you, do you expect
that you should be able to control it? I'm pretty sure many of the details of
my life appear in other people's emails, voicemails, journals, etc. that will
never have a "forget me" button.

I'm mainly suggesting that there are lots of ways to improve this situation,
from market forces to legislation, and it's sad to see people wasting time on
things that won't work.

~~~
JohnFen
> You can block trackers pretty easily, or just not visit those websites.

And since they're buying data from non-internet data brokers such as credit
card companies, retailers that track you in their stores, etc., blocking the
trackers and avoiding the websites doesn't actually stop the spying.

To stop them from spying on you pretty much requires that you stop engaging in
large swaths of real-world society.

------
rock_hard
There is a great interview with him that was recorded a couple days ago where
he talks about the status of the history tool:
[https://youtu.be/WGchhsKhG-A](https://youtu.be/WGchhsKhG-A)

~~~
dave5104
Any highlights or links to specific segments from that 1 hour and 43 minute
video?

~~~
kretor
He starts talking about it at 1:04:08:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGchhsKhG-A&t=1h4m8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGchhsKhG-A&t=1h4m8s)

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AlexandrB
It's clearly not a priority. Such a tool was a nice rhetorical device to
deflect some heat during the congressional hearings, but there's no way to
monetize it or use it to "increase engagement" so it's languishing in some
Facebook backwater. I think it was naive to think that it would turn out
otherwise.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that Facebook has necessarily been malicious
or lied. It's just that a product manager faced with the choice to prioritize
this vs. some new engagement enhancing widget is going to pick the widget
every time unless there's constant pressure from above.

Edit: This is why legislation is required. So privacy issues can't be ignored
simply because they don't contribute to the bottom line.

------
denzil_correa
The Recode article in December touched an important point about the name
"Clear History" [0]

> There’s a reason that Clear History isn’t called “Delete History”: Using the
> feature will disassociate browsing data that Facebook collects from your
> specific account but it won’t be erased from Facebook’s servers completely,
> Baser said. Instead it’s just “de-identified,” which means it’s stored by
> Facebook but no longer tied to the user who created it.

[0] [https://www.recode.net/2018/12/17/18140062/facebook-clear-
hi...](https://www.recode.net/2018/12/17/18140062/facebook-clear-history-
update-privacy-targeting-data-collection)

------
blocked_again
Zuckerberg did promise Winklevoss twins to build their social network as well.

------
Spooky23
From the FB statement generator:

We promised a history tool and have not delivered it. We are deeply sorry. We
founded Facebook to connect the world and facilitate relationships. We remain
committed to doing things.

~~~
giancarlostoro
They really like to do the BP oil spill apology approach, it's getting old
though. You can only continuously say sorry so many times before people get
sick of hearing it.

~~~
TallGuyShort
The vast majority of the user base that they care about doesn't even know
there's anything to say sorry for. If you would use this tool, you're worth
much less to them anyway.

addendum: If this bothers you, I would strongly recommend just jumping ship
now. There's almost no incentive for them to change and no sign of one on the
horizon. If you're not getting enough value from them right now to accept the
data they keep on you, you'll be happier just giving up and moving on early.

~~~
JohnFen
But how are those of us who already don't use their services supposed to
protect ourselves?

~~~
TallGuyShort
My point is to stop holding your breath that Zuck is going to be the one to do
anything for you. Do you think that's any less true if you don't even use his
service?

------
rchaud
FB won't change unless major advertisers do. And even then, there are plenty
of fly-by-night companies selling utter garbage (think tshirts/hoodies with
dynamically generated text labels) that will continue to find customers on the
platform because of FB's targeting ability.

I hate to say it, but it's probably too late anyway. FB has billions in the
bank and are likely working on much bigger-picture projects with their
surveillance tech. Why bother with a B2C product that brings tons of PR grief
when you can enter billion-dollar contracts with militaries and governments
where secrecy is the default MO?

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marmshallow
In the all hands meetings they would talk so much about establishing or re-
establishing trust, and I always wondered why they don’t just have a “clear
everything from high school and college” option. People would _love_ that
option, and it would make so many more people comfortable with using the
platform again.

Their loss.

~~~
cbsks
A few months ago I went through and deleted all of my Facebook content from
2005 through 2010, except for a few pictures. It took 5+ hours to delete each
item individually. A tool to assist this would be very helpful! I’m sure I’m
not the only one who wrote a lot of stupid posts and uploaded a lot of
embarrassing (and some slightly incriminating) photos to Facebook in college
that they don’t want saved forever.

~~~
niij
You're looking for: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-
post-m...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-
manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae?hl=en-US)

~~~
cbsks
That would have been helpful!

------
digitalneal
Pardon my ignorance here, never worked on this kinda program before, but isn't
is actually hard on complex databases like Facebook to actually remove data,
better just to mark it as unviewable?

~~~
cheschire
It's not just complex databases, but any database that uses indexes (basically
any production database).

Deleting a record from a table can cause a re-index, which is very intensive.
It's much easier to flag a column in a record as "deleted" or whatever, and
then run a cleanup during off-peak hours.

I'm sure there are clever ways around that with proper knowledgeable DBAs on
your team, but as I'm a web dev for smaller audience projects, I don't touch
solutions that require those types of optimizations that I'm sure Facebook has
implemented.

~~~
misterman0
》Deleting a record from a table can cause a re-index

As will adding new data and FB loves the story of adding to their profiling
DB.

This is not an indexing issue but a "we love adding data but hate removing it"
issue.

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throwaway_9168
"Oh, we actually meant advertisers/governments/Bing and other partners will
have a tool which will provide a clear view of your internet history"

------
SilasX
It probably just takes a long time to develop! I mean, keep in mind,
Facebook's app doesn't even support landscape mode. It's hard to find the
development bandwidth for advanced features.

------
nkingsy
My biggest issue with metrics and general "data" focus, is that it's
incredibly hard to generate data about goodwill. eg we can prove that call to
cancel reduces cancelations by 20%, but we have no way to measure how many
customers now hate your company and tell their friends never to use your
company, how many people would have returned but now won't, how many people
just cancel 3 months later.

In Facebook's case, we know they're seeing huge hits in active, engaged users,
but their whole metrics ecosystem is built to optimize micro-engagement. Taken
as a whole, those micro-optimizations are killing goodwill and turning off
users, but it's much harder to measure that.

So many decisions are made because variant b "won", without any discussion of
the layers upon layers of factors that aren't easy to measure.

------
Rafuino
There's also the issue of 100s, if not 1000s of random businesses having added
my contact information for advertising purposes, and I can't remove them all
without manually clicking each and every one. Anyone should be able to remove
these advertisers who have no business having my info (random car dealerships
and real estate agents 1000s of miles away, typically). Questions asked in the
help forum have gone unanswered for months.

------
thisisweirdok
What exactly are engineers and designers at Facebook doing? There are
thousands of them! I've seen teams of 10 ship more (granted, no one is
delivering on Facebook's scale)...

I know most of them are likely working on backend stability and performance...
but come on.

------
BucketSort
It's in Development™

~~~
chosenbreed37
> It's in Development™

Probably somewhere in the backlog :-)

~~~
mtgx
Move fast and break things. It's mostly in the "break things" phase, though.

------
HelloFellowDevs
I probably wouldn't be amongst the first in line for any 'tool' facebook would
be offering to completely own your data. I feel as if there would be something
that would be underpinning the tool which would make in itself useless.

~~~
beatgammit
Yeah, like the "delete your account" option. It's hard to find (disabling is
easy to find, but also completely reversible, so useless), and I'm sure it
doesn't actually delete anything, but it made me feel better than just leaving
my Facebook account active/disabled. I didn't have much of value there anyway.

I would _love_ more transparency here, but we're not getting that without
government intervention, and that's unlikely to come anytime soon (and what
gets passed may be worse than the current situation).

~~~
notafrog
A few days ago my fiancée asked me to delete her Instagram profile. There's no
user friendly way to do it. You have to go to help.instagram.com or search
Google to find the link.

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xrisk
This gets me wondering. What kind of incident would be required to provoke
public outrage over Facebook? Something that would bring public awareness re
their data collection policies? Or is Facebook Just Too Big To Fail™ anymore?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Massive public attention has already been brought to Facebook and its
policies. If the public isn't as outraged as you expect them to be, that's
because they don't think Facebook's data collection is a big deal, not because
they're somehow unaware.

~~~
JohnFen
> Massive public attention has already been brought to Facebook and its
> policies.

Not so much, really. Outside of techie types, my experience is that very few
people are aware of this stuff.

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spurcell93
Anyone with a background at Facebook definitely needs to be spoken with
regarding their integrity. Obviously only a small subset of FB employees make
the shitty decisions we see in the news, but it's very concerning to me that
engineers still go to work there. There are at 2 or 3 other BigCos that pay
comparably, and many others that pay a level down that don't require you to be
complicit in unethical behavior of this scale.

~~~
JohnFen
> it's very concerning to me that engineers still go to work there

Me too. And, although it may be unfair, I have to admit that I view engineers
who are still willing to work for them as suspect.

------
EGreg
When Facebook releases a tool to clear your history, how will you know it’s
really cleared? It will probably work as well as these instructions you can
_already_ use to remove your digital fingerprint from Facebook and several
other sites:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0](https://youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0)

~~~
ncallaway
As someone else said, if you're in Europe you can send a subject access
request after sending the deletion request.

That will tell you what data they still have about you.

You can't _know_ they've deleted everything if the subject access request
comes back empty, but it puts then in the position of having to actively break
the law to lie about whether they've deleted your data.

~~~
JohnFen
> it puts then in the position of having to actively break the law to lie
> about whether they've deleted your data.

True, but I don't think Facebook is too bothered by that sort of thing.

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spieglt
I made one: github.com/spieglt/fb-delete

------
lapnitnelav
Question to the HN crowd : Would having event data & PII-ish data decoupled be
an acceptable compromise to privacy granted that you can wipe the PII stuff
and the only data left is completely anonymous (just a UUID that leads to
nothing in case of deletion)?

Is anonymity in the eye of the beholder?

~~~
JohnFen
> Would having event data & PII-ish data decoupled be an acceptable compromise
> to privacy

That depends on how you define "event" and "PII" data. The normal industry and
legal definitions of PII leave out huge swaths of actual PII, after all.

Personally, I'm not even at the point where I can consider what is or is not
acceptable for companies like Facebook to keep. I'm still stuck at the point
of stopping them from collecting data about me without my permission in the
first place.

------
simias
I think "big data" companies realized that people simply were unaware of the
extent of the tracking and showing them how much they're being tracked would
make for terrible PR, potentially much worse than any publicized data leak. It
turns the tracking from some abstract concept into a very tangible list of
actions being recorded potentially forever.

Take that guy who managed to get a dump from his Spotify data thanks to the
GDPR for instance:
[https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025024813889478656/](https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025024813889478656/)

I'm sure we all knew Spotify tracked us but seeing how _much_ they track is
pretty crazy to me even though I'm pretty sensitized to these privacy issues.

I expect that a full dump from Facebook would be at least as verbose if not
more. I don't think they want the users to see how the sausage is made.

------
smallgovt
The problem is that privacy tools like this will severely hurt Facebook's
business.

Facebook uses its pixels to track purchase and browser history. This purchase
and browser history is a crucial part of their lookalike audience technology,
which in turn is one of the most critical components of their advertiser tool
suite. Without this data, advertisers will be less effective at targeting
their ads, which means lost ad revenue.

It's not surprising to me that Facebook is backtracking on this and vying for
other privacy improvements that don't hurt their fundamental business as much
(like letting users view how advertisers got their contact info, or letting
users view page ads).

~~~
FilterSweep
Building shadow profiles for people who don’t use your service is inexcusable.

Perhaps their “business” would need to be rescaled if they were honest about
serving ads to their users.

------
millzlane
You have to do it manually. I did it using a plug in and meticulously doing
each section at a time. likes, comments, posts, pictures, etc...

------
philipov
What the king says is what the king says, but what [facebook] stands for is
undying opposition to [clear history tool].

------
nfRfqX5n
the memories feature makes for a nice deletion tool, but i know the posts are
just being hidden

------
ori_b
Well, you see, people didn't leave Facebook in the numbers anticipated, so the
project got deprioritized.

------
vkaku
When beta testing, they used that tool to clear Zuck's history. Thus Zuck
forgot about it.

------
HereComesDatBoi
One really shouldn't believe anything that man says.

------
rdiddly
Facebook's behavior is highly analogous to, and best viewed in terms of,
narcissistic personality disorder. Thus when people bring up their legitimate
concerns about how FB screwed them in one way or another, Facebook thinks the
problem is the "beating" they're taking in the press.

I really don't want to read a single word about the "beating" they're taking.
It helps Facebook by exaggerating the harm done to them, and it pats the press
on the back for its supposed effectiveness. Facebook keeps growing and doing
the same shit, that's how effective it is. "Maybe if we just had more facts!"
says the well-meaning fool who then loses to a Zuckerberg or a Trump. Dream
on, the world doesn't run on facts and virtue. By way of contrast, if Facebook
executives had to suffer an _actual_ beating, Rodney King style, things would
be fixed in a hurry. I confess I would love to be holding one of the night
sticks too.

~~~
jamiek88
Your larger point is caught in the hyperbole but the point of ‘the world
doesn’t run on facts’ (meaning, I think, political world) is a good one.

FB get the appearance of pain and attrition. Press get more views and
plaudits. Nothing changes.

They need actual pain to their organization (not violence to individuals of
course) before a proper change will come. Think Microsoft pain in the 90’s. It
seems Europe will again lead the charge on this.

~~~
rdiddly
Yes, the political world, the one in which Mark Zuckerberg is a player and in
which almost none of us commenting here are players, unless maybe we were to
unite into one bloc. That world (and to the extent that "that world" runs "the
world," "the world" too) has little use for facts. I'm not saying it's great
or that we should give up. (Or that they can escape the facts permanently.)
But it is a fact. And each downvote of that fact, proves the world doesn't run
on facts!

------
Bolgar
A Clear History Tool was tested and it cleared itself from the history. So...

