
Facebook was Caught Secretly Deleting Mark Zuckerberg's Sent Messages - mewthree
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-to-let-users-unsend-messages-after-mark-zuckerberg-caught-2018-4
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jwilk
Yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818)

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saudioger
I mean come on, let's not be coy here: Mark Zuckerberg literally can access
and manipulate any Facebook data he wants. That's kind of his entire MO.

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jknoepfler
If you said this about Jeff Bezos and data on AWS, you'd be wrong. That's a
bit apples-to-oranges, but what I mean is being an executive in a company does
not entail access to customer data retained by the company.

I don't expect Facebook to be a good data steward, but they certainly could
be. Not to AWS's extent (Facebook can't turn a profit without reading your
unencrypted content, currently), but to a minimal extent at least...

Then again, whose trust are they trying to earn?

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saudioger
Sure, but AWS makes money from being paid to host data securely. Facebook and
other social networks make money by selling your data, so it inherently comes
with an amount of transparency to function as a marketable product.

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jknoepfler
I agree completely.

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rootusrootus
Did FB really think it was going to remain a secret? "Unsending" messages that
have already been read by the recipient is difficult to hide, and especially
when you're the CEO of FB one of those past recipients is going to pick up on
it pretty quickly.

Either FB knew and does not care, or their PR folks are completely incompetent
(or in the dark), or hubris at the highest levels.

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dbasedweeb
Third option: Zuckerberg said, “just fucking do it,” and they just fucking did
it. Total control is very much a double edged sword, especially when the
person in control seems to have only a tenuous grasp of human nature.

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well-here-we
Or lawyers made the decision as part of their “document retention” policy, and
no one spent much time thinking about the repercussions.

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Touche
What exactly is the problem here? Why _shouldn 't_ the CEO of a company have
special capabilities? He owns it after all.

You'll be outraged to learn restaurant owners often make things for themselves
that's not on the menu.

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gaius
So your bank manager can dip into your account?

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cachvico
Your bank could put a line at the top of your statement that reads:

SPECIAL HAPPY NEW YEAR MESSAGE FROM FACEBANK $0.00

and then come February they realise they look pretty stupid so they take it
out of the statement (web page). No one would care too much.

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onetimemanytime
OK, I would have done it too. This is a 0.01 on a 1-10 scale. Messages over
the years, at 2am or 1pm can be taken out of context and so on and here you
have one of the richest people on earth. Of course he could've said "my
assistants wrote it" but un-sending does not do much bad to the receiver.

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ehsankia
Can't they just claim it's an upcoming feature they are testing internally
before release, that will be rolled out soon?

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swyea
irony: [http://nordic.businessinsider.com/facebook-delete-sent-
messa...](http://nordic.businessinsider.com/facebook-delete-sent-messages-
enable-harassment-2018-4/)

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cbhl
I really want there to be a simple benign explanation for this. Like, maybe
this is a new privacy-first feature, and Zuck was simply dogfooding it
internally, just like with every feature before it gets rolled out.

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bitwize
"That wasn't Zuck abusing his power! That was, er, a new feature we were going
to implement!"

Uh huh. Sure, Facebook. And you call them "steamed hams" despite the fact that
they are obviously grilled.

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greggarious
Is it possible this violates Facebook's consent decree? If they need opt in
consent to _share_ information, and need to _actually_ delete information when
requested, it would logically follow that _deleting_ information without a
user's consent is not kosher.

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artemisyna
Repost. Also, more dead horse beating?

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projectramo
Right now someone, somewhere, is complaining that "the media" has ignored this
very event.

