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Comment by halflings | Hacker News Reader

Woah, didn't know it went this far. If anything, this would be great for facebook (which has been anything but transparent when it comes to what they do with your data when your account is deleted). Google already has some relatively transparent controls on what data they have on you, and allow you to wipe all or parts of it.

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Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer, sued Facebook Ireland over this and got them to release all his data. He also keeps a website where he explains how to get yours: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data...

I tried this back in 2012 after seeing Max profiled on Ars Technica. As someone who never had a FB account I was after my 'shadow profile' data.

Facebook emailed back stating:

"There isn't a Facebook account associated with the email address from which you are writing. This might be because you don't have a Facebook account or because you already deleted your account. In either of these cases, we do not hold any of your personal data."

I didn't ask for data attached to an email address, I asked for any personal data they had collected on _me_ and their answer was evasive and non-responsive. I didn't pursue it any further but I know they are bullshitting me, and I had to move on to other things.

But the law only works with companies.

The Internet as whole never forgets

The Internet also has to make money at some point, which means there's usually a corporate entity in the chain, one whose money (for better or worse) eventually touches Western banks.

So yes, the Internet never forgets (things it can make a buck off of).

Actually no. Saying the internet needs to make money is just as wrong as saying the roads need to make money. The net is just an infrastructure that has to be maintained and paiyd for. "Making money" is absolutely not a neccessety.

Ok, we are taxed for the roads and there are some roads that do require you to pay such as toll lanes. Think of Google and facebook as the restaurants and gas stations along the way.

Roads do need to make money. We just happen to have a larger concept of "make money" that encompasses increased commerce.

Mailboxes might be a better example of your point.

I'd argue that the current web looks more like roads than mailboxes though. We would have something more like Minitel if we'd gone the mailboxes route.

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