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Facebook Silently Removes Ability To Download Your Posts

Posted by Unknown on from the probably-best-to-forget dept.

dcollins writes "Facebook has a 'Download Info' capability that I've used regularly since 2010 to archive, backup, and search all the information that I've written and shared there (called 'wall posts'). But I've discovered that sometime in the last few months, Facebook silently removed this largest component from the Downloaded Info, locking up all of your posted information internally where it can no longer be exported or digitally searched. Will they reverse course if this is publicized and they're pressured on the matter?" It does appear that the archive of your wall posts is now only available through the not-very-useful Activity Log.

54 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. has that ever worked? by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Will they reverse course if this is publicized and they're pressured on the matter?

    How often has that been successful in getting Facebook to change anything?

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:has that ever worked? by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not because of the bad publicity, but if they take it as an indication that most people are upset about it then yeah, they might not want to annoy their user base away and fall below critical mass.

      Specifically to this issue? No, it's abundantly clear that most facebookers don't care. But when it comes to trivial things like "where did the 'like' button go why did you move it all the way to the line below oh my god this is horrible" then maybe.

  2. Malicious? by telchine · · Score: 2

    I don't really understand why Facebook would do this. What benefit is there for them?

    1. Re:Malicious? by loufoque · · Score: 2

      Force people to use their search tools rather than your own?

    2. Re:Malicious? by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      not having to fix the download info tool to work with something minor that broke it.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:Malicious? by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Obvious benefit is that it makes it harder for their Products to move to a possible competitor's website should they want to do so.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    4. Re:Malicious? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They don't want you to able to access your stuff if you're not on Facebook. This "encourages" you to stay on Facebook.

    5. Re:Malicious? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This. Probably one person that knows how to keep it running, and they got busy with other stuff.

      Though to be fair, FB has enough money to throw at a problem that it shouldn't be a real issue.

    6. Re:Malicious? by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 5, Insightful
      From Facebook's perspective, FTFY:

      They don't want you to able to access their stuff if you're not on Facebook.

    7. Re:Malicious? by NatasRevol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who the hell would want to repost all their old opinions & photos?

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    8. Re:Malicious? by djsmiley · · Score: 2

      Facebook has users? or the used?

      --
      - http://www.milkme.co.uk
    9. Re:Malicious? by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't get the outrage over "privacy rights" when users willingly go to and use a free platform that they should know is fully sponsored by ads and data mining.
      Personal responsibility.
      End of story.

      If the way you're speaking here is any indication, is not surprising that you do not get it. Expressing ignorance of other people's views and subsequently declaring that your simplistic response is the end of the discussion indicates that you're not interested in understanding the views of others. Yet in the ever optimistic hope that I've misunderstood you, and that you ask because you wish to understand, allow me to offer a few thoughts.

      Those in favor of information freedom and privacy rights understand the problem differently from the way you do. Your proposed solution indicates an atomized view of human action and choice-making. An individual chooses this or that option and is responsible for the consequences of those choices. That is all well and good, as far as it goes. But that an individual can act thus in a vacuum, freely choosing from a free market of options, is a myth--perhaps even the founding myth of Western liberal capitalist civilization. The problem those for information freedom and privacy rights (IFPR, hereafter) have in mind is not individual, but structural.

      An individual's choices are constrained by the structures of his environment. This is true online, but it can sometimes be easier to see in the physical world. When and where I grew up, there tended to be numerous small towns, each having small shops, grocers, banks, etc. The available items for consumption were fewer, but whom one chose to purchase from was more diverse. Over the years I've seen people gravitate ever closer to the cities, while retail in the smaller towns has increasingly been dominated by big-box stores like Walmart. In some ways people now have more choices--e.g. one can get at a Walmart today what he once would have had to special order. In some ways there are fewer choices--e.g. one can only get anything at the Walmart and even if he moves to another town he'll still find little more than a dead Main Street and a bypass dominated by another Walmart. It's a mixed blessing and curse, but regardless the choices one can make in the new environment verses the old one are different not because of the decisions an individual can make (i.e. not because of 'personal responsibility') but because of larger changes in the environment.

      The concern for IFPR is not that a few people might choose to surrender their privacy or that someone might lose track of every post he's ever made on a social network. The concern is that the web might cease to be an open platform, that it might be changed structurally to the benefit of a few corporations and for easier exploitation by governments. If this latter happens, the web could become the antithesis of individual choice--or personal responsibility--as available options are restricted to a few approved items. IFPR advocates wish to encourage corporations like Facebook to be allies of a free and open internet, but this is only possible if people can migrate from platform to platform, retaining their own data. Sure, that may make it easier for users to leave but if they provide a superior product then they needn't worry about that, do they?

      And lest you think IFPR is only a concern for Facebook users (which, as an aside, I am not and never have been), you should know that they track non-users all over the net as well. If we really want individual choice, we must do what we can to resist the balkanization that threatens to undermine the freedom and diversity of the web.

    10. Re:Malicious? by kermidge · · Score: 2

      One might want a copy of their stuff on their own storage media for reference or safe-keeping. For instance.

    11. Re:Malicious? by rwa2 · · Score: 2

      I do all of my posts to Facebook via Twitter. That means the Library of Congress has all my content archived.

      Also, it means I don't have to run the Facebook app on my Android device to post. Double win!

  3. Meh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Facebook removes a little-known, little-used feature that they no longer want to spend money supporting. The feature can be replaced on the user end with screen scraping. "News" at 11.

  4. Get a court order. by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If retrieving your posts is that important to you, get a court order, so Facebook must give you access to download them.

    1. Re:Get a court order. by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 4, Funny

      If retrieving your posts is that important to you, get a court order, so Facebook must give you access to download them.

      If the government's archiving all digital communications, who needs a court order? Just file a FOIA for your old stuff.

      --
      I am not a crackpot.
    2. Re:Get a court order. by c · · Score: 5, Funny

      If retrieving your posts is that important to you, get a court order, so Facebook must give you access to download them.

      If the government's archiving all digital communications, who needs a court order? Just file a FOIA for your old stuff.

      That could work, but you risk having them black out the parts you're interested in.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    3. Re:Get a court order. by JJJJust · · Score: 4, Informative

      US centric: The Freedom of Information Act is designed to get information on other subjects. The Privacy Act is what you cite and a far better tool to get information on yourself.

  5. Data protection request by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Depending on where you are, you might be able to send them a Subject Access Request or your local equivalent, forcing them to provide you with all the personal data they hold about you, give or take a bit of wriggling on their part, for a token amount of money.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  6. Reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    1) Buzz. You're talking about them. Free Advertisements rule!
    2) Trial balloon. Did anyone notice? A little. Oh well, we'll dial it back a bit. Maybe you can only download the last few days' worth.
    3) All your data are belong to ... Zuckerberg.

    1. Re:Reasons by bobbied · · Score: 5, Interesting

      3) All your data are belong to ... Zuckerberg.

      An excellent reason to NOT post personal information on ANY site, your data becomes another's property. Sites like Facebook collect an astounding amount of information from your activity, more than you likely suspect.

      I know of multiple births which where announced on Facebook. Birth announcements only gave the full name and date of the birth but one could deduce a lot more from Facebook. One parent posts the announcement of full name and date. You got the proud parent's name who has a spouse relationship so you now have both parents' names. You look at the mother who has her mother shown and volia, mother's maiden name. Births are recorded in the county records, so you look for what counties are close to their home address. You can usually weed that down to one or two. Now we have Father's name, Mother's name, Mother's maiden name, date of birth and county of birth which is more than enough information to take over somebodies identity. Poor kids...Don't even know how much trouble their parents may have caused them, even before they get out of the hospital for the first time.

      Seriously, if you find the need to download all your posts from Facebook and filter though them, you have a problem...

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    2. Re:Reasons by ron_ivi · · Score: 4, Interesting
      "Don't give personal info to strangers" should be a basic safety lesson all parents teach their kids.

      It applies equally much if the stranger's handing out free candy from a windowless van in a city park, or handing out free web services online. And remember that to you Sergei, Zuckerberg, and MySpace Tom are strangers no matter how much they claim to be "friends" who "don't be evil".

      Even Fox News tells you to not give facebook honest information (perhaps encouraging you to violate Facebook's terms of use).

      Personally I encourage everyone who needs to use Facebook to do it with entirely fictitious data. It's more fun. Your actual friends will know what your aliases are; and you probably don't want your non-actual-friends spying on you anyway.

    3. Re:Reasons by devent · · Score: 2

      But the problem is, that nobody thinks "I give my data to Facebook". The users think "I announce the birth to my friends and family".

      That is why in the EU we have strong privacy laws, and that laws should be expanded. At some point Facebook becomes a carrier like the telephone company or postal office. But Facebook is not transferring telephone calls or letters, but digital mails and pictures.

      Good luck try and explain that your baby pictures you post are going not to your friends and family but to Facebook, and that Facebook is just friendly enough to let your friends and family see that pictures.

      --
      http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
    4. Re:Reasons by AnalogDiehard · · Score: 2

      Sites like Facebook collect an astounding amount of information from your activity, more than you likely suspect.

      A friend just had a baby, he refused to use the FB birth announcement for the same reasons.

      When I signed up on FB this past fall, I purposely left few personal details in my profile. Having been a victim of identity theft, I am militant about protecting my privacy. I also despise advertising and am well aware of FB using personal profiles for advertising, and I do not want ads targetted to me based on where I live, where I work, my interests, etc. I take the usual precautions such as no discussion of vacation or business travel until after I return, etc.

      Yet FB has a system that can "guess" details like where you live and your interests based on what FB sites you "like". Every time I log onto FB, the top of my newsfeed nags me to complete my profile including its "guesses" where I live. One of my friends remotely filled in my hometown thinking she was doing me a favor, which I quickly removed and took her off my newsfeed. I work for a company with valuable IP and am well aware that listing my workplace on FB would draw malware hackers to me like flies to honey. I make a habit of hiding ads and citing "offensive" as the reason I am hiding them.

      Not surprisingly there's no option to tell the system turn off the nagging and I am not completing my personal profile.

      --
      Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
    5. Re:Reasons by tibit · · Score: 2

      At least in the U.S., if you've ever had a ticket, or was a plaintiff or defendant in a court case, or own real estate, or have liens on your property - you're out there already. The system that stole your identity was most likely automated malware that you had on your PC. That's how identities get typically stolen. No one has the time to give you personal attention, let's not be deluded about that. Identity theft by and large is an entirely automated process. What you do on Facebook is pretty much irrelevant.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  7. Captive audience by ultranova · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't really understand why Facebook would do this. What benefit is there for them?

    The harder it is for you to download your data, the harder it is for you to leave.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  8. I still see it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have the "Download a copy of your Facebook data" on my Account Settings page. Maybe this was selectively removed from some accounts only?

    1. Re:I still see it. by tepples · · Score: 2

      When you ran "Download a copy of your Facebook data", did the resulting archive contain your wall posts? The complaint is that the wall posts and only the wall posts were removed from the archive.

  9. or if by TitusGroan8856 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    or if you're in the UK serve them with a Data Protection Act Subject Access Request for all of your information, don't forget to ask for details of all those with whom your data has been shared.The most they can charge you for this is £10 and when they fail to comply you report them to the Office of the Information Commissioner who will ream their ass with a big fat fine. Similar legislation exists throughout the EU.

  10. Down the memory hole by mkro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On Sunday or Monday, I shared a "What is happening in Turkey" post, in English, from a Turkish friend's wall to my own. It was shared to "Friends except acquaintances" and got a few likes and comments. This morning I noticed it was gone from my wall. It is not to be found in my activity log, and the notifications of that it had been commented on were also gone.

    I was starting to doubt I had posted it at all, when I remembered to check Google Reader (Yep, still running), as I ages ago had set up a RSS feed with my notifications there. There it was, "[Friend's name] likes your link", with a clickable link to facebook.com/my name/posts/ followed by a numerical value. However clicking on it gave this message: "This content is currently unavailable. The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page". Other posts in my RSS feed works fine, so it was just this particular one.

    If it wasn't for the RSS feed, I probably would have shrugged it off and thought no more of it, so I guess the RSS feature will be gone soon too.

    --
    I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
    1. Re:Down the memory hole by c0d3g33k · · Score: 2

      Down the *censorship* hole, more accurately.

    2. Re:Down the memory hole by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Informative

      Have you read 1984? That's what a memory hole was.

    3. Re:Down the memory hole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Or your friend took down his post. When someone deletes their post, I think it cascade deletes the sharing of that post.

  11. Re:Why bother? by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do you really think that when you delete it that it actually deletes it? It's been standard operating procedure for years where I've worked that things appear deleted as far as the end user sees, but it's still there in the database just flagged "deleted".

    Doing this makes it far easier to "undelete" something when it was inadvertently deleted, investigate something that a user was trying to cover up, or just keep a record for our own data mining purposes that's separate to the end user's use of the data.

  12. Hotel California by istartedi · · Score: 2

    I don't really understand why Facebook would do this. What benefit is there for them?

    You can check out any time you like; but you can never leave... with your data, at least not easily.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    1. Re:Hotel California by mooingyak · · Score: 4, Funny

      Man, you just literally kicked his ass!

      --
      William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
    2. Re:Hotel California by Silvrmane · · Score: 4, Funny

      Now you're just trying to make me cry. :P

      --
      planet texture maps and more
    3. Re:Hotel California by Minwee · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sorry, but the language doesn't get mangled, it evolves.

      And your car wasn't "totalled" by a collision with a tractor trailer, it just "evolved".

  13. Re:Some whine with that cheese? by LMariachi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    By your logic, you couldn’t complain if I offered you a ride to the airport and then kicked you out of the car on the side of the freeway halfway there.

  14. Re:Some whine with that cheese? by Sockatume · · Score: 2

    Based on the ad revenue generated per user, a bit more than four dollars per year. Maybe as much as five.

    --
    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  15. Re:only post links by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

    FWIW, last time I tried to set this up, a FB rep asked for an admin login to my Wordpress to 'verify the setup' (you have to apply for an 'app' to do the link). I just ignored it, not being worth the tradeoff to me and moved on.

    Then a few weeks ago, my blog posts started showing up on my Timeline. Which is fine - since I kicked the habit a while ago, I'm very rarely on there anymore. But I was surprised they approved the app.

    BTW, if there are any religious facebookers here: try quitting for a week and see how much happier you are. If you have a real life too, it'll be much more rewarding.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  16. Re:I would ahve got a frosty by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Insightful

    good point. Where is the link on slashdot to download all my comments?

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  17. Idiots!! The feature has NOT been removed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    The feature has NOT been removed. It is right here:

    https://www.facebook.com/settings

    Simply click "Download a copy of your Facebook data."

  18. Did it ever occur to anyone by kaizendojo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    that they may be simply working on the site and temporarily disabled the link while they work behind the scenes? Anyone bother to contact their support to find out what was going on? No, let's all just start rumors and have the media pick it up as a 'news' story.

  19. Re:I would ahve got a frosty by Aaron+B+Lingwood · · Score: 5, Informative

    Where is the link on slashdot to download all my comments?

    Here!

    --
    [Rent This Space]
  20. I still have the option to download everything... by AcquaCow · · Score: 2, Informative

    The link is here in your settings: https://www.facebook.com/settings

    Link is at the bottom... "Download a copy of your Facebook data."

    -- Dave

    --

    up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
    *makes note to limit user processes...
  21. Why the fuck does anyone use FB? by WOOFYGOOFY · · Score: 2

    Really? Because of network effects. That's it. Everyone else is communicating on it.

    It's purely a predatory play- they capture people who are at a time in their lives when they're well known to be indiscreet. They then record all that indiscretion. Then they monetize it.

    Meanwhile, Zuckerberg is taking the results of that monetization and campaigning -hard - for XL Keystone pipeline.

    http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_23151754/keystone-xl-foes-rally-front-facebook-protest-zuckerbergs

    a fact he's aggressively trying to lie about:

    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/04/30/1943091/facebook-rejects-ad-highlighting-zuckerberg-groups-support-for-keystone-xl/

    because like all other deniers,. he's first and foremost a narcissist:

    http://www.afterpsychotherapy.com/narcissistic-personality-disorder/

    who relishes the idea that he's smarter and more knowledgeable across a highly technical domain than are the the world's scientists who have spent their lives disciplined in and mastering that domain.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm

    But one thing he doesn't have in common with other deniers

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

    is he's going to be around long enough to be forced by society to bear, without reserve, the consequences of his actions today, which depending on how bad things get, could range anywhere from total dissolution of his personal wealth to fund emergency, remedial action against global warming - an outcome that is now a virtually certainty- to extended torture at the hands of enraged mobs / quasi-civilization, should we reach five degrees of warming and real civilization just breaks down.:

    http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nRf2RTqANg

  22. It has, indeed, been removed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA. You can download an archive of some of your data. While that archive used to include your wall posts (a substantial portion of the content you generate on Facebook), that content is no longer included. I have tried and verified this.

    1. Re:It has, indeed, been removed by DaTrueDave · · Score: 3, Informative

      I just did it and my wall posts were included in the downloaded archive. Strange that it works for some, but not for others.

    2. Re:It has, indeed, been removed by ArsonSmith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      then they haven't updated their what's in doc:

      What's in your archive?

              Photos or videos you've shared on Facebook
              Your Wall posts, messages and chat conversations
              Your friends' names and some of their email addresses

      (Note: We'll only include email addresses for friends who've allowed this in their account settings.)
      What's not in your archive?

              Your friends' photos and status updates
              Other people's personal info
              Comments you've made on other people's posts

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  23. Re:I would ahve got a frosty by pthisis · · Score: 5, Informative

    That page only has comments going back to December for me. My complete posting history goes back over a decade.

    --
    rage, rage against the dying of the light
  24. Re:I would ahve got a frosty by kermidge · · Score: 2

    I got tired of clicking "older" and hadn't even gotten past February. Nowhere did I see a link or button to d/l all one's posts. Also found a slew of topic posts mixed in for unknown reasons.

    So unless someone has "the key", getting your posts - however far back they may go - off /. is a non-trivial exercise.

  25. Re:I would ahve got a frosty by Aaron+B+Lingwood · · Score: 5, Informative

    That page only has comments going back to December for me. My complete posting history goes back over a decade.

    This is slashdot. News for Nerds.

    The Slashdot search function goes something like this:

    wget -U “Lynx/3.0 http://www.google.com/search?&start=1\&num=100\&q=27352+site:slashdot.org -O Search01.html
    wget -U “Lynx/3.0 http://www.google.com/search?&start=101\&num=200\&q=27352+site:slashdot.org -O Search02.html
    wget -U “Lynx/3.0 http://www.google.com/search?&start=201\&num=300\&q=27352+site:slashdot.org -O Search03.html

    Then

    lynx -dump -listonly Search01.html >> URL_list.ascii
    lynx -dump -listonly Search02.html >> URL_list.ascii
    lynx -dump -listonly Search03.html >> URL_list.ascii

    Then grep out the webcache and google URLs and trim off anything that prepends the URL you want with a Perl substitution

    s/(https?\:\/\/)(\w*\.)?(slashdot\.org\/.*)/$1$2$3/

    And finally, wget again

    wget -U "Lynx/22.0" -i ./URL_list.ascii

    It is at this stage you realize that you have just downloaded 200MB of javascript and are found 2 days later sitting under a cold shower in the foetal position

    --
    [Rent This Space]