Facebook's 'Clear History' Tool Doesn't Clear Shit (2020)
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/activity_list
To actually opt out, you have to click the "More Options" button, then "Manage Future Activity" at the bottom, then "Manage Future Activity" button, then toggle off the "Future Off-Facebook Activity" toggle.
Dark patterns. So disrespectful. Shameful. :(
> The only thing you’re clearing is a connection Facebook made between its data and the data it gets from third parties, not the data itself.
However this is not the main privacy issue with Facebook in my opinion. Even if Facebook users could legitimately clear their third party data entirely, they still can't easily clear their own first party data (posts, photos, searches, likes, Instagram activity, etc). Right now, you have to go click "delete" in your activity log one-by-one on individual posts. This is so time consuming and manual that most users will never do it - which is of course by design.
There is a plugin that helped users delete their Facebook content (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...), by letting you select the time period and type of content you want to delete. However, Facebook repeatedly breaks it by changing the page design for seemingly no real reason. The cat and mouse updates worked for a while but this extension has not been updated since 2019. Some creative people then built a second extension that switches Facebook to an older layout (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/switch-to-classic-...) and this allowed the above history clearing extension to work. But then Facebook made an even more drastic redesign of the Activity Log, which broke this approach of using a second extension in conjunction with the first.
Can any enterprising HN code ninja help solve this problem? I think we need a suite of tools to help users easily clear their history from all social media platform, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever. Ideally we'd have a law requiring such controls be provided to users but I'm not holding my breath.
To me, 'delete' means 'remove this entry' and 'clear' means 'remove the data in this entry.'
Can I file a restraining order against Facebook? Or Google?
Our legal system isn't equipped to handle the majority of free people deciding to act like broad-spectrum stalkers within the span of a few years. Society only works if most people aren't evil or utterly susceptible to evil influence.
[1] https://law.jrank.org/pages/9409/Privacy-Common-Law.html
We need new laws for this. GDPR is a good start, if one happens to be an EU citizen, if a bit toothless.
We need new laws because automated collection of vast amounts of personal data, at scale, is a thing different in kind from manually collecting personal data about a specific person. Due to the expense and difficulty, the earlier system would tend to scale broadly with someone's fame, or at least wealth, which matches our expectations: it's not surprising that, say, a gossip magazine would have a fat file on Leonardo DiCaprio, and we figure he has lawyers on hand to deal with any consequent fallout.
In fact, we all used to be quite grateful for the unsung laborers who would collect and publish a doxxing book, called the white pages, which would list the names, phone numbers, and addresses, of most local people. Of course they were legally obligated to unlist those who requested it...
It actually has a better bite than most. The problem is that the one suposed to do the biting doesn't do a lot of it.
https://transition.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.txt
Probably the text starting here:
SEC. 702. PRIVACY OF CUSTOMER INFORMATION.
Title II is amended by inserting after section 221 (47 U.S.C.
221) the following new section:
SEC. 222. PRIVACY OF CUSTOMER INFORMATIONUnited States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435
Not as long as you're maintaining an active relationship with them. First step is to break up and stop using their services entirely.
I published a tool on GitHub for deleting message history in the most efficient way I could find. Yet users of the tool sometimes get their accounts banned because Discord's TOS prohibits unauthorised use of their API. I speculate this is because they don't want custom clients which don't send back telemetry.
Discord is either tone-deaf to common privacy concerns or they're completely conscious of them and don't want people to clear their message history.
How do I enforce deletion if I have unwittingly only a "shadow account" in Facebook?
Fines here are proportional to profits, so it would be absurdly high for Facebook.
> and if they disabled their business in the EU there would be riots.
Not really. In the last five years I've seen an ever growing anti American sentiment around here. I guess it's because all the antics that were coming from the angry Cheeto.
America is now seen as unstable and unreliable. The sentiment around here is basically (generally speaking): "and what happens of they decide to elect (another) Trump again?"
Line em up.
Millions of websites/apps/stores willingly deliver this information to Facebook/Google for free, and it's your relationship with each of those websites/apps/stores that governs the collection and sharing of that data.
GDPR, for instance, makes a distinction between "data controllers" and "data processors." The businesses are the controllers, and FB/Google are processors. Both have responsibilities regarding the handling of your data, but most of the requirements fall on the controller. The processors are able to assume that the controller had the right to share the data with them.
This is from FB’s terms and conditions, so I guess they can still keep the data.
If you agree to any other website’s terms and conditions saying “any third party can track you”, you have again given permission.
In this case, most people haven't read the Facebook terms of service and it is probably unreasonable to expect everyone to not only read them, but to keep abreast of any updates. So it's a grey area. And if you pass laws and regulations around data privacy, then FB won't be able to legally impose such conditions. But as I said earlier, there isn't much inertia behind data privacy. Nobody with power wants it.
Yes, and they also depends on power dynamics.
That's why there are a lot of restrictions on what can be written in a contract between public utilities and users. An electricity provider could strong-arm users into signing draconian contracts otherwise.
Social networks have the same negative externalities: if most of your friends move from using emails to using Facebook to communicate and you are not on it your life gets provably worse. You are cut out from a lot of your social circle.
Having walled-garden social networks is anti-competitive by design.
Unfortunately legislators turn a blind eye to this.
Or is too influenced by big technopoly lobbying dollars.
I completely disagree with this thought process. If a website is asking your birthday, every like / dislike , every detail about relatives and is able to predict if you like someone even before you do .. you better know how they will use all this data.
To coin a meme: "Ain't nobody got time for that"
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles...
I find it hard to believe that they can't associate more information with those profiles than just who has who else as a contact (or has in the past), some derived/guessed and some from purchasing access to other data-sets, and I find impossible to believe that they won't if they can. Not just FB but other purveyors of advert targetting stalkerdom too. This isn't "don't trust the man" foil-hat paranoia - knowing as much as possible about as many people as possible is their well documented business model.
One one hand, it is extremely sad to see talented engineers at Google/FB work hard on products designed to spy on people, but OTOH, I suppose it could be far worse if these were companies who simply sold our data.
I imagine that the number of people who even hear or read about these privacy leaks represent a minuscule fraction of the user base.
And of those that are aware of these leaks, a small fraction are concerned about internet privacy.
I suspect Facebook is too useful as an intelligence and surveillance tool to lead to some kind of meaningful legislation, penalties, whatever. If you can delete your data, then you can hide your tracks. Also, even if we assume that the US at least has in its favor a cultural apprehension toward surveillance, China doesn't, so you'll have a situation where a country is monitoring everything to death while you don't know what's going on. At least that might be the thinking. If that is so, I cannot imagine any realistic solutions. A race toward the bottom. You would need to ween people off Facebook, to cause them to leave the platform in droves. The only way to do that is to offer something better and that something would need to have privacy "built-in" in some way and either remain profitable or decentralized.
I assume that's changed since 2010 - https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-does-not-erase-user-d...
Granted, this was a decade ago but even then all of us tried not to laugh and I just said something along the lines of "Do you know how they have ads for wedding venues right after you were engaged? That's how."
Directions on analytics come from the "serious, business-minded" end of the company. That is true for every [major] journalism outlet. It's always been true.
Don't put that on the writers to resolve. Unless they have the resources to found their own competitor, they're as much at the mercy of the whims of the company heads as the readers are.
Even the development staff have little to no say about it. Inclusions of those kinds of things are at the behest of sales/marketing and management/executive. There is less crossover between those groups and the editorial staff than many people have decided to believe, no matter how often they're reminded.
If you ask me, the writer is doing plenty and they're doing exactly what is in their power to do: write about it.
Frankly, it seems like a modern miracle that a publication will produce editorial pieces that are so self-critical. I think it speaks to a healthy journalistic environment in general, even if the business practices need an overhaul.
It's crazy that we need to go through so much crap (tracking, cookie notices, ads, newsletter prompts, SEO keyword soup) to get the simplest answers.
The website I run is deliberately annoyance-free. I see it as a competitive advantage.