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Facebook Blames a 'Bug' For Not Deleting Your Seemingly Deleted Videos (gizmodo.com)
Last week, The New York Magazine found that Facebook was archiving videos users thought were deleted. The social media company is now apologizing for failing to delete the videos, blaming it on a "bug." It adds that it's in the process of deleting the content now. Gizmodo reports: Last week, New York's Select All broke the story that social network was keeping the seemingly deleted old videos. The continued existence of the draft videos was discovered when several users downloaded their personal Facebook archives -- and found numerous videos they never published. Today, Select All got a statement from Facebook blaming the whole thing on a "bug." From Facebook via New York: "We investigated a report that some people were seeing their old draft videos when they accessed their information from our Download Your Information tool. We discovered a bug that prevented draft videos from being deleted. We are deleting them and apologize for the inconvenience. We appreciate New York Magazine for bringing the issue to our attention."
"We appreciate New York Magazine for bringing the issue to our attention."
for real
April fools?????
which is a great language for prototyping or programming if you know what you're doing and you're the only dev on the project, but junior devs or even senior ones that don't know the code they're working with, it's a disaster.
For example, I was able to prototype a search feature with an Elasticsearch backend for our inventory system in only a long weekend. By long weekend I mean working from Friday night at 6pm straight through Monday early morning 2am, but still it was only one weekend. It took three senior Java developers nearly six months to get it basically working because we wanted it in Java. My boss got frustrated and put my PHP code into production and had those Java devs update it. With every "fix" they made, I think they almost always broke other things. They knew the specs well since they had worked with them for almost six months, but that didn't help. PHP is awesome, but unless you only have one dev that is good working on the project, then things like happened to Facebook are inevitable.
Facebook was built on PHP with apache web server, they aren't even properly utilizing web sockets yet relying on $.post network storms to update information. Facebooks underlying architecture is garbage technology from around 1995 that they have massaged and tinkered into doing all sorts of back flips. Then it exploded in a sprawl of developer created add-ons along with going IPO and suddenly having an entire board full of nitwits each bellowing their egos into pet projects for the site that was must have because as soon as they said it was must have their underlyings would scream MUST HAVE and sacrifice a burning goat for their over-god executive boss.
Facebook is likely riddled with bugs some caught some lying in wait. They never went back and rebuilt the architecture utilizing nodejs technology and are doomed to continue whipping the dead apache horse until the very last maggot gets its wings. At this point considering that almost their entire code base has been cobbled together at the behest of a hundred screaming heads it is no wonder it would be a mammoth undertaking to rebuild it with proper tech.
There is little if anything that can be done about it either. The whole thing just has to keep failing in spectacular ways until someone comes up with a newer shinier model. Kind of like a ferrari shell ontop of a modified go-kart frame/engine. As far as rebuilding the engine goes, fat chance of that happening. Nodejs took the world by storm and now we have a technology that meets our needs and yet most of the existing architecture/developers are apache. It will take some time until everyone gets caught up and using the right tool for the job.
More likely the real bug was in letting the users download these videos a part of their archives, instead of paying attention to the "deleted" flag.
-- Alastair
We "forgot" to include actually deleting. Sure ya did!
Seriously though, deleting is very often just a flag in the database. Often the same thing when you "delete" your account.
Likely someone just forgot to honor the deleted tag in the database entry. Storage is cheap these days. Lots of online site, forums, social media, etc just delete entries by setting a deleted tag on the DB entry. One possible use of such data that is deleted but really just tagged as deleted is if you harassed someone or posted something otherwise illegal. The evidence could still be collected if you later choose to delete the post. It's probably pretty safe to assume that every post or comment you've made on Facebook but later deleted still exists in their database, it's just tagged as deleted and their download your data feature properly honored the deleted tag in the DB entry and didn't include it in your download zip. It is possible that after some time, possibly months they run some kind of job to purge the deleted posts to clean up the DB
We need to #NukeFacebookFromOrbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I had a conversation with my mother I'd rather kept private several years ago. Some things were said which shouldn't have been and the conversation was behind us.
I deleted the conversation my end, 100% definitely. I also de-friended my mother, not to be mean spirited but because she couldn't figure out the different between a private message and a wall post, this is not a good thing.
(We get along fine, believe it or not, we spoke on the phone)
Mum got sick with cancer last year, I spent a lot of time with her. While she was sick, I re-friended her and there comes the messages back in the history. Ok sure maybe it sent me 'her copy'?? Annoyed at this I deleted the messages on both my account AND hers, since I had her phone.
When mum got particularly sick and no longer could maintain her account herself at all, my stepfather took over the account. I de-friended her, at the risk of those damn messages somehow surfacing again, again, not a malicious move.
Finally after mums death, my stepfather said he couldn't find me on the friends list of the account, so I relented and again, friended mums account.
Sure enough, guess which messages where there again, in the history?
Conspiracy theories aside, I've seen this, in person. Multiple times.
Christ I don't care if a history of chat between 2 people come back upon a friend / de-friend situation, it's arguably, quite a useful feature.
HOWEVER specifically deleted messages within the history, multiple times, on both accounts, SHOULD, BE, GONE.
Unacceptable.
By bug, they mean code. Code that they wrote. I think we need some Facebook "raid"
The "I wanna be POTUS" dude and Lean On Woman are embarrassments. They should be deleted.
Tat Tvam Asi
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, to paraphrase the famous quote from Arthur C Clarke.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
or any other online entity for data breaches if YOU place your data there. All of this is a farce. There are very companies that can be trusted with your data, companies that have shown themselves to be transparent and honest by dint of their actions and how they conduct business. Fastmail is one of the few that I know that fall into this tiny group. I've been a customer since 2002, and there is no one else I would ever trust with my data.
I saw all of these breaches coming years ago and have never had a "social media" account and never will. I can see zero value in having one. Yes, I am called anti-social, but my data is mine and not being sold online to behind-the-scenes entities that exist solely for profit. There will come a day when people will regret ever using the likes of Facebook, et al.
People said I would need a social media account or Linked In for a job. Not true. Never needed it. Don't need it. Will never need it. Any employer that would make hiring me contingent on having Facebook or Linked In is not worth working for.
"deleting"
-how quaint
Victorian police? Isn't it a little late to be complaining about police abuse from 1900?
We are very very sorry (for being caught.... again and again and again)
Facebook also stores posts that you write but don't post. It's difficult to explain capturing text as it's typed as a bug.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
The continued existence of the draft videos was discovered when several users downloaded their personal Facebook archives -- and found numerous videos they never published.
The actual bug is that Facebook mistakenly told users of the archived deletions. Reporting of these archived deletions will now correctly be withheld from the personal Facebook archive report. That is all.
Delete and even Nuke isn't going to do it (they'll have backups, somewhere).
We need to feed it so much false personal information that the signal/noise ratio makes it useless. (It's already doing that to itself on the news front.)
#FalsifyFacebook
-- Alastair
A bug, sure.... Just like the emissions testing cheating features in cars were labelled bugs. It all amounts to predatory behaviour, which appears tolerated only for lack of transparency and accountability over software's inner workings.
facebook is big, the amount of compute and storage required are gigantic, i've worked in large data centers, but even those will be nothing compared to theirs.
but, i can't imagine nobody is noticing all this wasted disk space?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I'm shocked, shocked to find user data not being deleted when requested.
Here is your deleted user data sir.
No? Funny that.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I'm sure Facebook has already released, or soon will release, a firm yet sincere apology in a modest yet self-glorifying press release.
Just like politicians that apologize when they get caught and called out for lying or corruption - they're only sorry that they were caught, not for what they did wrong.
To anyone that participates in facebook activities and does not see the evil within, please open your eyes.
To anyone that sees the evil and still participates, understand that you are complicit in the degradation of your own future and that of everyone else.
Victorian police? Isn't it a little late to be complaining about police abuse from 1900?
The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.
In other news Facebook is now selling hard drives at a discount!
You: Hey Facebook, did you delete my data?
FaceBook: Sure I did. Here's your deleted data!
and CIA, and possibly FBI. Don't think for a second that your deleted files are actually deleted.
The bug is called "We Don't Want To".
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"