
Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted - walterbell
https://nymag.com/selectall/2018/03/facebook-secretly-saved-videos-users-deleted.html
======
guessmyname
This reminds me of the long conversations that I used to have with family
members and friends several years ago. With their continuous requests to
create my own Facebook profile so I can keep in contact with them and with
their activities as well as to share my whereabouts. I always used the same
argument to reject these suggestions — _" I don't want Facebook to have too
much data about me, more than the data that you already provided"_.

I got used to the looks of disbelief, thinking that I was some sort of hermit,
an antisocial.

I also got tired of answering the frequent _" Why don't you have Facebook?"_
questions.

I remember the last time I had this conversation with someone, last year
(2017) around August. I found a new love partner, and after the long intimate
talks on the phone, they requested the usual _" intimate pictures"_, not
necessarily sexual but certainly sexy. While I have no tabus with regards to
my sexuality, having an understanding of how the Internet works, I have always
refused to send that type of images/videos/audios, and I always tried to be
patient with the other person to explain my constant denials. Unfortunately,
expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the
Internet is most of the time based on hope, and even if they understand, they
ultimately don't care because the result doesn't change: you don't get to
share something with them and that affects personal interactions.

I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never
meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing that I
believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just
mark it as _" deleted"_ and purge it only if they need the space. The same way
a hard drive works, you don't really delete a picture when you hit the
"delete" key, nor even if you clear the "trash" folder, the data is still
there, where it was, it just loses the links to the metadata.

It is sad how this information becomes news only when bad things happen.

~~~
wormseed
> I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has
> never meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing
> that I believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data,
> they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space.

This is a dumb conspiracy theory. Facebook has made plenty of public
statements that say otherwise, and there's a whole team that works on the
system that ensures every trace is erased from disks, logs, cold storage and
backups when deleting content.

~~~
ridgeguy
Looking online briefly for definitions of "delete":

"remove or obliterate (written or printed matter), especially by drawing a
line through it or marking it with a delete sign."

"synonyms: remove, cut out, take out, edit out, expunge, excise, eradicate,
cancel"

All of these seem clearly "absolute" to me. "Delete" means it's gone.

I think Facebook has its own special linguistic distortion field. It requires
no "dumb conspiracy theory" to realize that Facebook cannot be trusted.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Deletion by flag is very common in IT and presumably has been since the first
undelete program was created. It's not a Facebook thing.

Some mail programs for a long time have had a soft-delete that requires an
expunging process to create compete removal.

In an IT setting you can delete a blob from a db, but it might still be on
disk, and it will still be in caches, on user machines, and in
backups/archives.

~~~
mic47
Because FB deletes by flag so that content disappear instantly and then start
the actual process of deletion (which can take while because of stuff like
backup, cols storage)...

------
ori_b
You mean they follow what many people consider best practices?

[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1592...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159232/should-
we-ever-delete-data-in-a-database)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/820466/never-delete-
entr...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/820466/never-delete-entries-good-
idea-usual)

[https://serverfault.com/questions/31455/should-i-ever-
delete...](https://serverfault.com/questions/31455/should-i-ever-delete-sql-
and-db-anything)

[https://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Do-Not-Delete-
Data](https://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Do-Not-Delete-Data)

[http://udidahan.com/2009/09/01/dont-delete-just-
dont/](http://udidahan.com/2009/09/01/dont-delete-just-dont/)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2549839/are-soft-
deletes...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2549839/are-soft-deletes-a-
good-idea)

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/soft-delete-for-
azure...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/soft-delete-for-azure-
storage-blobs-now-in-public-preview/)

I find it fascinating how much shock there is that Facebook is doing what
nearly everyone else is doing, and what many people here have likely
implemented.

~~~
bitexploder
Disclaimer: I deleted my Facebook account a couple years ago and never looked
back.

That said, Facebook is who is just getting collectively stabbed with the
pitchfork right now. Engineering best practices are one thing. My right to
privacy is another. As an engineer I care about efficiency. As a human I care
about privacy. My rights win over any technocratic babble. Sorry if I am being
harsh. I am, of course not surprised. Engineers are lazy at best and at worst,
something truly sinister is brewing.

~~~
ehsankia
I agree that you have the right to privacy, but there's also technical reasons
why instant deletion is not always possible. If they can guarantee that the
data will be gone after X days, then that's fair to me.

~~~
bitexploder
Yeah, that works. A best effort of actual deletion is good enough IMO. Maybe
even notification it is actually done being sweeped out of a storage system.

------
WovenTales
The most unsettling part is in Facebook's response: “We’ve heard that when
accessing their information from our Download Your Information tool, some
people are seeing their old videos that do not appear on their profile or
Activity Log. We are investigating.” Who wants to bet against their
investigation being “how to keep users from seeing it.” Anyone?

~~~
jlmorton
I honestly don't understand this cynicism. Facebook does not want your deleted
video, and they certainly don't want to keep it given the current media
frenzy, with the CEO under fire.

Every application of any complexity has features which inactivate, but don't
delete data. At Facebook scale, deleting data is non-trivial, and it would be
impossible to immediately delete something.

We all have bugs, including extremely critical security bugs, availability-
threatening performance bugs, or many other types of bugs. It's strange that
we accept those bugs as merely bugs, without assuming a backdoor, or
intentional sabotage, but when it comes to personal data, suddenly it's a
nefarious plot. It's an odd position to take that Facebook is not only saving
these deleted videos intentionally (for what, exactly?) but that they'll now
lie to us and pretend to delete them, but only remove it from their Download
Information tool.

Kudos to Facebook for even having such a tool.

~~~
benwilber0
I agree with you.

At Facebook-scale the data is _massive_ \-- far bigger than anyone here could
possibly comprehend and that includes the Facebook and Google-ers lurking
around.

Data has incredible inertia. And when there's a lot of it, in a lot of
different places, I can imagine that it becomes very difficult to keep track
of.

I'm glad that Facebook's data export tool included some things that maybe it
didn't expect to.

~~~
mattnewton
If it’s too hard to do properly maybe they shouldn’t be doing it /shrug

~~~
donatj
Don’t allow users to delete things?

~~~
anf
Don't gather data you can't manage it ethically.

Facebook has a responsibility to protect user data they have collected, and if
they can't then they shouldn't.

------
sp527
One fascinating outcome of all this fallout is that there's now a readymade
excuse to stop using Facebook.

My personal observations are that a good number of people have felt 'fatigued'
by Facebook for a very long time, but were also unsure of how best to
extricate themselves without incurring a social penalty.

But now there's an impetus that most people can understand. I'm not sure about
how many people will move away or how quickly it'll happen, but the network
effects Facebook capitalized on can also work in reverse: if you have just one
or two very vocal privacy proponents in a friend circle pushing to get off the
platform. One group I'm in recently migrated to Telegram for this very reason.

~~~
fastball
If you truly want privacy and security I would recommend Signal over Telegram
-- Telegram has had some controversy with respect to their encryption protocol
not being audited, as well as some weird stuff with a very large recent ICO
that seems entirely unnecessary except as a money grab and Russian subpoenas
for their master private keys.

~~~
eitland
> and Russian subpoenas for their master private keys.

While I cannit defend (or attack, I'm no cryptographer) their crypto they seem
to have a solution to this:

They say they don't store keys in the same datacenter or even jurisdiction as
the customer data they protect.

According to them this means getting unencrypted data through a legal process
would mean getting a warrant in two or more countries at once.

~~~
akotulski
> They say

> According to them

I find it very hard trusting their word. And we know the company has the
ability to read messages. How is telegram better from FB messenger?

~~~
eitland
Sorry for my late reply:

> And we know the company has the ability to read messages.

I don’t think we actually know that.

In fact I think they have a system to keep data and keys apart and in
different jurisdictions to prevent USA, Russia or anyone from being able to
get access to it.

I am no cryptographer or legal expert though.

> How is telegram better from FB messenger?

This is a bit simpler: while Facebook messenger might be E2E encrypted I have
good reason to believe that Facebook will datamine my metadata and sell it to
however wants to pay.

------
thinkingemote
Just an anecdote. I had a day set aside to purging my Facebook entries a year
or two back. I manually deleted comments and posts.

Of course there was too many to do and it was very boring so I only spent a
couple of hours at it. But that's nots what's interesting. What happened was
that I got a huge uptake of people commenting on some old post I made, like a
profile picture change. I think Facebook saw I was purging my data slowly and
reached out to my FB contacts encouraging them to interact more with me. It
was very odd.

~~~
multibit
Is there not a way to delete all posts and comments at once?

~~~
jwr
Facebook makes it very, very difficult. But there is a method using a Chrome
browser extension, I've used this method recently with success:
[https://www.mariusschober.com/2018/01/20/delete-facebook-
act...](https://www.mariusschober.com/2018/01/20/delete-facebook-activity/)

It will take some effort, but it's doable.

~~~
gkya
So your stuff is not deleted when you delete your account (soft or hard)?

------
john_minsk
The funniest part of it: All the media hype around the topic is generated...
BY DATA collected by NYT/Bloomberg/Techcrunch/you name it. Those articles
generate additional views and they just continue to ride this wave. And all
those publications share this data with 3rd parties (ad networks, analytics
providers, cpa networks)

On top of that, you know what else do they measure? SENTIMENT. So until
kicking Facebook generates more revenue - the articles will paint Facebook as
a world's main evil. But the day sentiment changes you will see all the
articles about Facebook following best practices.

And in the end? Some EU commission will be created and make a law which oblige
to "show cookie usage disclaimer", because of which 90% of sites welcome you
with ugly popup and ruin the experience providing 0% advantage in managing
your privacy...

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _On top of that, you know what else do they measure? SENTIMENT. So until
> kicking Facebook generates more revenue - the articles will paint Facebook
> as a world 's main evil. But the day sentiment changes you will see all the
> articles about Facebook following best practices._

So what you're saying is that sites like nymag will only run stories that are
profitable?

~~~
john_minsk
Kind of. When everyone is writing articles AGAINST Facebook, it will be very
hard to 'sell' article which SUPPORTS Facebook to the editor (because of the
potential PR nightmare when potential 4chan starts attacking you)

Article can't go through editor -> article is not published

------
kerkeslager
Secretly? Secretly from whom?

There is nothing I've come across, ever, that has lead me to believe that
Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., ever delete anything, ever. Not even to clean
up space as some people on this thread are suggesting. Hard drive space is
cheap and data is valuable. This isn't a secret, this is a fairly obvious
business practice that _all_ the big players, and most competent small
players, are engaging in.

~~~
austincheney
Clearly there is a big disconnect here. It seems somebody is suggesting there
should be a correlation between a user removing content from their account and
Facebook destroying some of Facebook property.

Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook. Users have no
business telling Facebook to destroy Facebook property.

~~~
kerkeslager
> Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook.

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion.

Are we to accept that this is how it works simply because Facebook says this
is how it works?

~~~
lerpa
You accept that when you join.

~~~
kerkeslager
Users didn't accept anything just because they checked a checkbox next to a
link to an ever-changing jumble of legalese to get past a screen. This isn't
agreement, it's manufactured consent.

~~~
_acme
Unfortunately no matter how many times you say this or how much you wish it
were true, US (at least) courts have disagreed with you by enforcing contracts
of adhesion.

~~~
kerkeslager
I think we're in agreement, we're just saying things slightly differently. I
believe human rights exist and are an ethical imperative whether or not
lawmakers/courts choose to protect human rights.

Or put another way, the law _should be_ (but often isn't) informed by human
rights--human rights aren't informed by the law.

------
mabbo
Huh. So now I'm starting to think: what if I purposely recorded thousands and
thousands of meaningless video? None of my friends would ever see them since I
never published them, but Facebook would use up hard drive space storing them.

What if a lot of people did that?

Suddenly Facebook's cost for hanging onto all these videos would become quite
high with no value in doing so.

Anyone feel like making a website to help automate that process?

~~~
pishpash
You should upload random-pixel uncompressible videos and delete them over and
over again. It not only increases storage cost but makes the profile SNR very
low.

There are general-strike level attack surfaces on these networks, but people
don't really care that much.

~~~
r00fus
Does their AUP/TOS allow them to lock you out in that case?

Lockout would be worse than account deletion. You would have no recourse to
fight back on any of their use of your data right?

~~~
philipwhiuk
> You would have no recourse to fight back on any of their use of your data
> right?

Yes you would if you were European. You can't stop people exercising their
legal rights because they broke your terms of service.

------
throwaway2016a
This (and the GDPR - even though my company is in the US) are why I now tell
the developers on my team to not collect info unless they have a definitive
use case as to why to store it. And make sure to delete delete data as soon as
it is no longer needed.

It helps that my business doesn't monetize via advertising.

My guess is what actually happened here is that they had a use case to store
it for a few hours or so (incase, say the user changed their mind about
posting it) and no one ever bothered to write a cleanup script because
"storage is cheap" and possibly "maybe we might have a use case for it
someday"

I can't imagine this being intentionally. Even if I try to consider malicious
use cases I can't think of any where it would be beneficial for Facebook to
actually store this data besides being too lazy to clean it up.

Edit: Wow. Who new applying Hanlon's razor to this would get me downvoted so
badly? I'm going to leave this here unedited and eat the downvotes of the
people on an anti-facebook warpath because I think it is important to state
that we as people who make tech products often take short cuts (like avoiding
dev work because it is cheaper to just keep data in storage) and we need to
stop doing that. There is plenty of stuff Facebook does that is beyond the
pale but this one is more likely contributed to lazyness, and if you are going
to downvote me without explaining why you are not contributing to the
conversation.

~~~
dang
Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
throwaway2016a
My apologies, dang. I did not realize and/or forgot that was against the
guidelines. Will not happen again.

~~~
dang
Thanks!

------
MobutuPehuenche
I would think this is common practice.

I know that YouTube, for example, retains videos indefinitely, because I've
personally been able to retrieve videos that were deleted in as early as 2006.

It was possible for anyone to do this until some time in 2017, when they
started requiring signatures for RTSP streams. All that was needed was the
video ID (the eleven characters in every YouTube video URL). Didn't matter if
they were private (IDs for these could be enumerated if the channel ID was
known), "deleted" over ten years ago, or behind a paywall.

From ~2008 until 2015, you could do the same but with higher quality streams
through the now-retired Apple TV API.

------
Eleopteryx
I'd have been more surprised if they _didn 't_ save them. I always assumed
that anything remotely hosted that I "delete" is soft-deleted, and that
anything I edit is actually just versioned. (I'm not claiming to be especially
smart, just cynical.)

------
schrep
This was a bug. There was an old feature that used to allow you to record and
post directly from the browser. Those videos were streamed to FB as they were
being recorded. If you decided not to post those draft videos should have been
deleted but were not. They showed up in download your information (DYI) as
expected because that tool is designed to show you the data Facebook has about
you. Thanks to New York Magazine for the flag. If you see anything in DYI that
doesn't look right, let us know and we'll investigate. This was a bug, and we
really do appreciate any help in finding them so we can fix them.

~~~
kough
I downloaded my information and then deleted my account before realizing that
the archive I downloaded did not include any of the photos or posts that I had
been tagged in, because I made those posts only visible to me on my timeline.

~~~
schrep
If these are posts by other people that you were tagged in then those posts
should still be up, just without the tags of you, on the original posters
timeline.

~~~
kough
Sure, this just doesn't do me any good because I don't have them archived or
any ability to access them :)

------
whalesalad
Is this really a secret or a surprise? Most SaaS companies of this size don’t
really ever delete anything. They set a deletion flag and call it a day.

~~~
derimagia
Yeah for most things this is a good way to do it. For user data when they
delete the account it would be ideal if they actually removed it though

~~~
fiatpandas
Why would that be the good way to do it? Especially if that deletion action
was behind a confirmation, or if the data was never recoverable by the user?
At that point, just delete delete it.

~~~
derimagia
A lot of reasons, here's a simple example: If you have a "product" which had a
CRUD interface to make and users who add it to the card, deleting it would
cause relationships to fail - as in if users who already purchased the item or
added it to their cart would no longer be able to see it.

------
dbg31415
I'm shocked. No one saw this coming.

* Facebook reads your private messages, California class-action suit alleges. || [https://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/03/facebook...](https://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/03/facebook_reads_your_private_messages_california_class_action_suit_alleges.html)

* Facebook asks users for nude photos in project to combat 'revenge porn' | Technology | The Guardian || [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/07/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/07/facebook-revenge-porn-nude-photos)

* Facebook CEO Admits To Calling Users 'Dumb Fucks' || [http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-use...](http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb-fucks)

------
jijji
Someone should mention also that in the downloadable facebook archive, in the
html/ folder, there is a file called contact_info.htm and its a pretty large
file. It is apparently every google contact you ever had, all synced to
facebook, for every device you ever logged into. So, if you ever might have
used a friends device to check your facebook account using then facebook app,
then all of that persons contacts are there too, as well as their sms history
metadata and call history metadata.

~~~
scottmf
I’ve let quite a few people log into the Facebook app on my phone and now I’m
pissed.

I was always careful with privacy settings on Facebook, but the thought never
even crossed my mind of what I’d be “agreeing” to by letting someone briefly
use my phone.

I’m sure someone will come along shortly to tell me I deserve it and should
have know better and was _asking for it_ but whatever.

How will the GDPR handle instances like this?

------
radicaldreamer
I imagine that the data in those downloads is a fraction of all the data
Facebook collects. It seems that they disclose only what is required based on
local laws, so it's unlikely they will ever disclose derived data unless
forced to (for example, the location data they collect and combine to figure
out which people were present at the same party etc.)

------
xab9
Btw why do we think that the downloadable archive contains everything they
have? Because they said so?

Just add a bool field to the table "canExport".

~~~
fiatpandas
I don’t think we think that. Obviously, in the context of HN crowd, FB has no
real credibility / ethical compass.

------
craigvn
This is no surprise, virtual delete is common design pattern.

------
singold
This is why I've never really deleted my FB account, I've just deactivated it.
If I don't believe they would truly delete the data I might better have it
available if I want it

------
halukakin
I don't think facebook really deletes any data. You deleting a comment or a
picture pretty much means: isvisible=false;

~~~
demxzy
More like visible=false;

~~~
hodl
Display=none is more appropriate

~~~
navium
Maybe visibility:hidden too.

------
izacus
There are people on this very site complaning about how "hard" it is to delete
data on request to be GDPR compliant. Highly paid developer experts are
literaly throwing a fit when told that they should be able to delete data when
"Delete" button is clicked.

It's not just Facebook.

------
Kequc
Storage costs next to nothing, recovery costs a lot. Why would facebook who
depends on this data for income ever delete it. You get two massive benefits
from keeping it and setting a "deleted" flag.

Why would anyone expect anything different. How entitled do people feel they
are.

~~~
speedplane
It's quite simple: if someone says they deleted something, you expect them to
delete it. If they don't, they are lying, and you can't really trust them with
anything else.

~~~
Kequc
Facebook has been embroiled in back to back privacy scandals since it opened
and you still trust them? How much simpler does it get, I agree, that's pretty
simplistic!

------
appleflaxen
A lot of these revelations are coming from the fact that Facebook allows you
to download the information it has stored about you.

There is an exceedingly high chance that the managers are going to notice
this. And, rather than doing the right thing by storing less information, they
are going to lie about what they have, and put a filter in place regarding
what they let you download (a bit) vs. what they actually have (everything).

We need to be nuanced in our approach to the world, but it is becoming
increasingly clear that Facebook has created a business model that
incentivizes (and maybe depends on) evil behavior.

------
donatj
What I think so many privacy advocates don’t realize while frothing at the
mouth is that odds are 99.9999% no one really wants _your_ old photos or data
specifically. Surely in large aggregate, but on a macro level you are no more
interesting than anyone else. You’re not. You have a delusion of grandeur.

Sure, you might get some targeted ads by data used in aggregate and put you
into a group but so what? If I had to see ads, I’d rather them be things I am
interested in.

~~~
philipwhiuk
Ah the old nothing to fear argument.

~~~
donatj
Oh, there’s plenty to fear, this just isn’t it.

The proliferation of cameras and cellphone tracking hooked to state owned
machine learning predicting your decisions - which is publicly happening in
China and almost certainly quietly happening everywhere else? Terrifying.

Data collection on crap that’s nearly public anyway? Merely a distraction.

------
m-p-3
It's kind of unsurprising. As soon as you upload some data into another system
that you do not fully control, you can't really expect or trust the other
party to discard it because you want to.

Unless there's a good an easy way to store that kind of data and share it with
End-to-End encryption (and the server NEVER has access to those keys) so that
only authorized users can view the plain data, that problem will remain.

------
lanmannen
In all likelihood, this is simply the tip of the iceberg. I see Twitter's
stock is collapsing, due to similar concerns. Nothing is private anymore in
this day and age.

And yet - If we're concerned about what Facebook has on us, then just imagine
what kind of treasure trove the government sits on.

------
arthurofbabylon
I’m looking forward to HN letting go of this enthusiastic expectation of FB’s
demise and putting forth higher quality articles.

(Note: I feel the same enthusiasm. I just want to read more meaningful,
comprehensive articles.)

------
Havoc
I considered this a feature. It's interesting to compare true convo vs what's
left after people have backtracked and deleted messages. Especially when the
convo was daring so to speak. ;)

------
themihai
Well, once you give permission to your data you no longer control how it's
stored and shared(at least physically). To make sure you are not caught off
guard you should always expect the worst.

------
crb002
Could be non-malicious if they want to prevent redundancy of the same video
going up twice or just laziness in engineers who didn't build D in their CRUD.

------
wemdyjreichert
And this is why I never signed up for social media in the first place.
Remember the afage about stuff on the internet never really going away? Yeah,
it's true. Another interesting note: some friends hiring in Austin, TX have
told me they can't hire in town because almost every kid has a social media
containing drunk pics.

~~~
adamnemecek
who cares they have pics containing drunk pics online? is the employer
supposed to dictate my morality?

------
aidaman
"They're looking into it."

AKA they will continue harvesting the data but be better about not letting you
know what is being harvested.

------
phwd
I've downloaded my zip file to try to verify what's going on in the article

I _think_ I have an idea of what _might_ have happened.

When you add a video to the composer window

One of the requests is [https://vupload-
edge.facebook.com/ajax/video/upload/requests...](https://vupload-
edge.facebook.com/ajax/video/upload/requests/start/?dpr=1&__a=1) (Look it up
in the network tab of whatever browser dev tool you are using)

With the response as,

for
(;;);{"__ar":1,"payload":{"video_id":"11111111111111","start_offset":0,"end_offset":353662,"skip_upload":false},"bootloadable":{},"ixData":{},"gkxData":{},"lid":"1"}

The video 11111111111111 is now in an "unpublished" state. "unpublished" here
meaning it's uploaded to Facebook but not linked to a post yet.

You can verify this by taking that ID and doing the following

[https://www.facebook.com/11111111111111/](https://www.facebook.com/11111111111111/)
-> redirects to
[https://www.facebook.com/phwd/11111111111111/](https://www.facebook.com/phwd/11111111111111/)

"Sorry, this content isn't available right now"

Your options now are to either discard the _post_ or publish with a privacy
setting which will make the link above available. (Notice I didn't say discard
the video, the video is still in an unpublished state)

Now for the archive.

You can verify by going to view-source:fb.com/me in a browser Search for the
string "access_token" there will be a long string appended. (e.g.
access_token:"EAAAAU...)

With that token go to your archive and roll over one of the links in the video
section that has an issue and doesn't appear in the activity log.

file:///Users/phwd/Desktop/facebook-phwd-from-zip/videos/11111111111111.mp4

grab the ID 11111111111111 and do the following

[https://graph.facebook.com/11111111111111?access_token=THE_T...](https://graph.facebook.com/11111111111111?access_token=THE_TOKEN_FROM_view-
source:fb.com/me)

That shows an unpublished video for me, it wouldn't show in your activity log
(that's the only part of the story I can agree and can confirm with what I
have available)

To delete add the method=delete to the request.

[https://graph.facebook.com/v2.9/11111111111111?method=delete...](https://graph.facebook.com/v2.9/11111111111111?method=delete&access_token=THE_TOKEN_FROM_view-
source:fb.com/me)

Response should be

{ "success": true }

The next part would be to verify that the video is deleted from the archive.
Since Facebook is still giving me the first download zip, I guess I'll have to
wait a while (it's 1 am here so I'm heading to bed) until it resets so I can
make it build a new archive and confirm the hunch.

This is just my guess, I'm NOT discounting what the Facebook user encountered.
I'm just providing a possible background to how it can happen as well as a
solution to deleting the "deleted" video. There is also the chance I might be
wrong...

References to confirm for yourself. developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-
api/reference/video

Disclosure: I don't work for Facebook, however, I do play with their API a
bit.

------
dbg31415
* This Is Why You Should Delete Facebook Permanently || [https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/delete-your-facebook...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/delete-your-facebook-matthias_n_5460164)

From 2014. Good summary video.

------
BadassFractal
How do I mass-delete all of my Facebook data? Likes, posts, etc. Is there a
reputable tool out there that can take care of it for me since Facebook
doesn't provide you with one?

I'm generally ok with keeping Facebook just as a contacts list, but I'd rather
not have it have anything else.

------
siruncledrew
Storage is so cheap, it wouldn't be surprising they save everything they
possibly can.

------
lanevorockz
I can't believe people don't pay attention. Facebook never removed any data
generated, they just remove the index from the data. Deleted data is can be
more valuable than data that is kept there.

------
sandov
Isn't it kinda obvious that fb 'secretly' stores everything that may be
beneficial to the company?. Who is still so naive as to believe that they care
about your privacy?

------
anonymousab
For maximum honesty, they should just rename all of the Delete buttons and
text to 'hide' or better yet, 'hide from friends'.

Short, simple and to the point.

------
blackrock
It was already known that Facebook burns all user data onto a bluray disc.

How do you erase data that's been permanently burned onto an optical medium?
You can't.

------
peter303
The has happened numerous times in the past, especially when they switched to
timelines. Everything you thought deleted reappeared.

Basically once in Facebook, always in Facebook.

------
stjohnswarts
This is why for those 'special' videos one should always just use a handheld
camera and not their cell phone. But the public will never learn.

------
Capaverde
Lol I'm not impressed by anything at this point. I thought it was clear from
the start, they don't care about you, you're the "useds" of facebook, as
Stallman would say. But still, every new evidence that comes up confirming
this must make into a separate headline, and we'll keep on getting plenty of
those until... I don't know. Until it either dies or rebrands itself well
enough to pretend all of this never happened, I suppose.

------
garyvee_
Decluttered: [https://outline.com/zAZ4BM](https://outline.com/zAZ4BM)

------
charkubi
Given any data submitted to FB legally becomes their property, they don’t have
any obligation to delete it.

------
jsemrau
I always believed in the right to be forgotten. That's why I am not on
Facebook nor Google Plus

~~~
ipsum2
How does being on HN help? Your comments can't be deleted after a certain
amount of time (a few hours).

~~~
PaulStatezny
At least Hacker News is transparent about that that behavior.

Facebook et al. are not.

------
enigmaY
How about youtube? Is there any law specifying website must delete the data
user choose to remove?

------
z3t4
What you put on the Internet might stay there for ever, is an important
lesson.

------
Demcox
This can not be a surprise to anyone with a just a bit of skepticism.

~~~
speedplane
Agreed, but most do not have much skepticism. You and I may have known about
Facebook and had accounts (or deleted them) for over a decade, however many
current users are relative internet novices.

------
bamboozled
Meanwhile, FB share price is on the up again ha

~~~
scottmf
But still very much down from before the CA story dropped.

------
AndrewOMartin
Did they save any of the videos that Google Drive have recently deleted?

------
gsich
"surprise"

------
feelin_googley
Heres something that I noticed earlier today that might be of interest:

420 million Facebook profiles uploaded to archive.org

[http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/03/the-
kiwi-s...](http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/03/the-kiwi-social-
network-that-still-has-your-deleted-facebook-data.html)

~~~
danso
Definitely worth noting as another example of how data can be harvested — but
also important to point out it was a third-party created archive made from
2007 and 2010. People will still be (justifiably, IMO) unhappy. Just as they
were when YourOpenBook made the risk so blatantly obvious.

------
feelin_googley
Meanwhile:

[http://fortune.com/2018/03/31/facebook-employees-are-
reporte...](http://fortune.com/2018/03/31/facebook-employees-are-reportedly-
deleting-controversial-internal-messages/)

~~~
yorby
that link doesn't work for me... this one appears to be the same thing:
[http://start.att.net/news/read/category/politics/article/for...](http://start.att.net/news/read/category/politics/article/fortune-
facebook_employees_are_reportedly_deleting_controv-rtime)

~~~
feelin_googley
Sorry about that. Its just a brief article.

Heres a no-Javascript version:

    
    
        curl -o 1.htm  http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/03/31/facebook-employees-are-reportedly-deleting-controversial-internal-messages
    
        sed -i '/<p>/,/<\/p>/!d' 1.htm ;
    
        firefox file:///1.htm ;

------
feelin_googley
"I do also think that, you know, Facebook has a responsibility to its users to
protect their data and _not_ just to protect it but make sure that people
understand _what data they 're producing_ and whether they own it, who has
access to it and when.

And Facebook has failed them, you know, across the board.

And the question now is _not_ just what - you know, what can be done to ensure
the security of that data. It's, how can we use this moment to ensure that
we're having a broader cultural conversation about the data that we're all
_creating_ on Facebook, Google, Amazon, through our phones, et cetera and make
sure that the companies are held accountable for it?"

Source:

Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes

[https://www.npr.org/2018/03/30/598208043/should-facebook-
use...](https://www.npr.org/2018/03/30/598208043/should-facebook-users-trust-
ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-apologetic-tone)

------
nsaaass
What app can put 2 major spy agencies in same app ?

Cia and fbi in facebook app.

------
feelin_googley
"The guy who was showing me around pointed out where they were building
"apartments for our people to live".

"So they'll work on campus, they'll eat on campus, they'll socialise on campus
and now they'll sleep on campus?" I asked. I wondered whether maybe that was
kind of unhealthy. Creepy, even.

My guide looked right at me, and for a moment, his megawatt smile faltered.
When he first worked there, it reminded him of the Dave Eggers book, The
Circle, he said. Then he started talking about the opportunity to _connect the
world 's people_, and I stopped listening."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_\(Eggers_novel\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(2017_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_\(2017_film\))

Source:

[https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-
style/people/jennifer-o-...](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-
style/people/jennifer-o-connell-i-have-finally-deleted-my-facebook-
account-1.3436928)

~~~
andr
While this may sound creepy for a foreigner, getting a decent apartment in the
SF Bay Area is really expensive and the commutes are horrible. So in this
context, that could be a good thing.

~~~
andreyf
Why does it sound creepy? What percentage of the population, historically,
have been "free" in a sense that they don't belong to an organization that
exerts some sort of control over their social world? It seems there are many
shades and dimensions here...

~~~
verylittlemeat
Actually I think in some ways the lower classes have more psychological
freedom here.

I've worked a bunch of minimum wage retail jobs and all the grunts mock the
daily "walmart chant." At high status jobs people apparently really buy the
"my employer is who I am" thing.

~~~
icebraining
_" At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the
middle-class Outer Party: they are subject to certain levels of monitoring but
are not expected to be particularly patriotic. They lack telescreens in their
own homes and often jeer at the telescreens that they see. "The Book"
indicates that is because the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally
starts revolutions. The model demands tight control of the middle class, with
ambitious Outer-Party members neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or
"reintegration" by the Ministry of Love, and proles can be allowed
intellectual freedom because they lack intellect."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-
Four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four) :)

------
nsaaass
I really do not like fb at all!

------
rapind
I have no such duty. I'll teach my kids when they get a bit older, but trying
to teach adult friends is an unrewarding exercise in futily (mansplaining
even).

~~~
Sir_Substance
>mansplaining even

I am fascinated to know how you are going to wedge gender politics sideways
into this completely gender neutral conversation.

I agree that talking data storage strategies to people that aren't interested
is unrewarding, but please mansplain to me how explaining technical concepts
is mansplaining? Ideally, also define mansplaining in the process.

~~~
meddlepal
It's simple:

\- most folks in tech are men

\- most men date women

\- in 2018 any attempt a man makes to explain something to a woman is a
candidate for being accused of "mansplaining".

I'll say one other thing:

I honestly have no clue if mansplaining has a more technical definition but in
general I see most people interpreting it as a man explaining anything to a
woman.

~~~
scarmig
It originated with Rebecca Solnit, who had an experience where a man and she
were talking and a book came up that he had read. As he's telling her about
the book, she points out that she's the author of the book, and he proceeds to
continue explaining the book to her.

I certainly see this happening sometimes. Earlier this month I remember
sitting in on a meeting where a boy fresh out of college was trying to explain
SQL injection to a (female) senior security engineer.

That said, I think that happens to everybody, albeit disproportionately to
women. And now mansplaining has other really silly uses as an epithet, like "a
male with expertise is telling me something I don't want to hear" or "a male
disagrees with something I believe very strongly."

------
fwdpropaganda
Cue wave of outraged HNers because some people believed Facebook cared.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
I don't think pointing out how disconnected half of the userbase here is is
unsubstantive. 99% of people who use Facebook has not the fainstest idea of
what Facebook is doing, why they're doing it, and why it might be wrong.
Still, on each of these threads the top comment invariably starts with "why is
anyone surprised that.. etc". I could find you links to prove my point, but
I'm can't believe you're not aware of this. So I strongly disagree my comment
is unsubstantive.

~~~
throwawaylp0
HN users live in this weird Silicon Valley bubble that is divorced from the
real world..

~~~
dang
Only about 10% of HN users are in Silicon Valley, and many of those are
critical of it.

------
markhahn
FB is not dropbox, so "deleting" means a different thing.

~~~
danso
Maybe, but that’s not the case in this article, which describes an obsoleted
video feature.

------
luxnoo
At what point was any of this news? TOS is clear on this so if this was to
bother anyone they would have read that before hand. If I was running a data
collection business like google for ad-analytics I wouldn't delete anything
either, that's your bottom line your wiping away!

------
dictum
Fortune cookie:

Forgive and forget. Someone must do it and everyone else will not.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/01/faceb...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/01/facebook-uses-10000-blu-ray-discs-to-create-petabytes-of-
cold-storage/)

------
gall_anonim
I don't care. I stopped caring about my privacy. Nobody will hurt me by
knowing too much about me. Facebook can have all of my life, because nothing
is private for me.

It is a great tool for keeping up with friends, it allows to cultivate
friendships a lot easier than anything before. We can have a lot of friends
when we don't keep secrets, because by being open with your weaknesses you
create new friend, not an enemy. You create enemies with secrets and lies.

~~~
cvaidya1986
Hi Mark!

