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Facebook Retracted Zuckerberg's Messages From Recipients' Inboxes (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the of-course-they-do dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: You can't remove Facebook messages from the inboxes of people you sent them to, but Facebook did that for Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspiculously remain. An email receipt of a Facebook message from 2010 reviewed by TechCrunch proves Zuckerberg sent people messages that no longer appear in their Facebook chat logs or in the files available from Facebook's Download Your Information tool. Casey Newton, a reporter at The Verge, tweeted, "Deleting Mark's messages while leaving the recipients' intact highlights Facebook's actual views on privacy better than any statement it makes on the subject ever will"

Update: Facebook has just announced that it will give all users an option to unsend messages.

18 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Their servers, their service by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is their service running on their servers. They can do whatever they want with it. Why would anybody be surprised?

    I also have my own servers, and I can also delete whatever I want from them. So what?

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Their servers, their service by nospam007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "I also have my own servers, and I can also delete whatever I want from them."

      Exactly! You're an asshole, they're assholes, no difference.

    2. Re:Their servers, their service by e432776 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The sad mistake by the public seems to be thinking that their correspondence on Facebook actually belongs to them. This sort of event shows that is absolutely not the case.

      Keep your bits on your own machines, kids!

      As for Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg: Have you no shame? This sort of move looks terrible. Perhaps you have no brain.

    3. Re:Their servers, their service by DogDude · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This sort of move looks terrible.

      Does it, though? People using Facebook are already doing so because they don't care about their data. Other people already know they shouldn't give their data to Facebook. I think that stuff like this has zero impact on Facebook.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    4. Re:Their servers, their service by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      Keep your bits on your own machines, kids!

      Except your backups!

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    5. Re:Their servers, their service by edtice1559 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Removing it from certain people's inboxes would not be destruction of evidence as long as Facebook still has the records. Now it's harder to get that evidence (need a subpoena that can be fought), but just adding a visibility flag to the data does not destroy any evidence. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm anal.

  2. Stop using Facebook by hazardPPP · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If Facebook's policies piss you off so much, stop using it (I stopped in 2011). It's not like you have a subscription you paid for the year and now have to use up to get your money's worth or something. Just log off. Delete your account. Say no.

    You can live without Facebook. It's not necessary. If they change their ways, you can always go back. Nothing will get Facebook to change the way they operate like losing millions of users really quickly. If users just bitch about, but keep using it, nothing substantial will change. If people start leaving in droves, then they will change things.

    1. Re:Stop using Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      don't worry, they can put together quite a nice profile of you from all of your friends and family that still use it.

    2. Re: Stop using Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      my hero for quitting FB so long ago. the smartest people never used it in the first place (or my space or friendster for that matter).

      it's such a privacy nightmare I don't understand how anyone would choose to.

    3. Re:Stop using Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I stopped in 2011

      stop talking and ravage me
      tell me about how you dont have a tv too

    4. Re:Stop using Facebook by hazardPPP · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Privacy is an illusion.

      Its what we tell ourselves to protect us from what other people might think about us. With enough effort, anyone can gather just about any information about you that they want. Hire a PI and have them follow you around for long enough, and they will tell you things about yourself that in some cases you are unaware of.

      Once you realize that privacy is an illusion, then you'll be much happier about your life. Playing pretend is a child's game.

      Likewise, most people don't care about much of what you do behind closed doors. Sure there are exceptions, but I can tell you that most ./ers don't give a shit about what's growing in my back yard.

      I'm afraid you've drunk the Zuckerbeg Kool-Aid.

      Yes, absolute privacy is an illusion. Unless of course you are willing to live as a hermit completely isolated from society. People, of course, at least intuitively, know this. Relative privacy on the other hand, is not an illusion at all - it's a real thing. It's about what we decide to tell or reveal about ourselves to different classes of people. This is a fundamental pillar of social relations. Some things, I tell to no one (although it's conceivable that people could find out about them if they really tried). Some things, I will tell my wife, but not my co-workers...some to my friends, but not my wife...and so on. Of course, those different sets of people could talk to each other and destroy my perception of relative privacy. Which is where we get to another thing: trust.

      The whole uproar about privacy in the modern era and its impact by modern technologies is really about two things. The first is exposure. With these new technologies, the vast majority of people have no idea how exposed they are to the world when they are using certain services, and very few of those service providers communicate that in a clear way. It's hard to intuitively understand, because what is done to your data is very opaque to you as a user. The average person will make the connection between using a free service (Free-to-air TV channels, Gmail, Facebook) and being shown ads while they use it: OK, they will say, by serving up advertising they make money since I don't pay them directly. However, the average person will not make the connection between the ads and data gathering (now they might of course after all the news on it, but at the beginning of such services years ago, they would not have). If I read a book (a paper copy), and do not talk about it, no one knows I read it. If I buy a newspaper, nobody knows if I've read the sports section or the cooking section. If I read an article on my phone, tons of apps might be tracking me and seeing what I've read. If I talk to a friend in a cafe, I know that besides my friend, what I said was perhaps overhead by a few people around me. If I chat to that friend over Facebook, Facebook knows the entire content of that conversation...and who know who else as well.

      People need to know about this, because if they don't, they will be unwittingly exposed. This can go from the party-pooping (I'm buying a surprise gift for my wife, we share computers, then before her birthday Google and Facebook ads spam her for the exact thing I bought - no longer a surprise) to the life-destroying (I have a fight with my wife, think of divorce, google it up but then forget about it - then at maybe a very bad time, she realizes I was doing this via some Google Ad or whatever, and things get worse). That doesn't mean we should limit people's exposure at all times. It means people have a right to know what exposes them - so that they can choose what and when to expose to whom - to protect their relative privacy.

      The second issue is trust. If I say something to a friend, I have some expectations about whether he will share this information, and with whom: I have a certain level of trust in him regarding the protection of my (relative) privacy. With Facebook and the like, the level of trust you

  3. It's just a glitch in the Matrix by olsmeister · · Score: 2

    Most people wouldn't even notice it. The fact that you did notice means you must be our salvation... the one that's been foretold, the one we've been waiting for.

  4. Facebook 2020 == MySpace 2010 by Oxygen99 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How long can Facebook stock hold up while Peeping Tom Zuckerberg carries on as CEO? Even the general public can't be dim enough to continue contributing to this Orwellian freakshow.

    --
    I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
    1. Re:Facebook 2020 == MySpace 2010 by HiThere · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I wish you were correct, but my real guess is that Facebook will continue until something just as intrusive, or more, replaces it in popular fashion.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  5. Re: Who is behind this by Bradmont · · Score: 3

    Instead of bitterness, my reaction is, "finally," with a sigh of relief. I just hope whoever is orchestrating the blowback doesn't lay off and that it really starts to eat into Fancebook's user base.

  6. Don't add an unsend option by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Facebook should just admit that the execs of the company have that and more powers and the
    ability to exercise more actions than mere mortals when it comes to messaging tools and access
    to data on the website, because clearly they do.

    Unfortunately they don't yet have control of users' e-mail accounts, so they can't yet delete receipts or E-mail based proofs,
    although they might in the future tweak the feature that sends messages to E-mail accounts to prevent it from being used to
    prove a message was sent.

    just announced that it will give all users an option to unsend messages.

    That's bullshit. Once you send a message and someone's read it;
    what to do with the copy of the message within their Inbox should be their decision.

    I could think of dozens of different scenarios where I would want to keep a message against the sender's
    desires, such as evidence of wrongdoing, OR evidence to protect me (E.g. Proof they directed me to do X), and they should have no say in that.

  7. It is surprising that there is any outrage. by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 2

    It is said so often it is cliche. On Facebook, you, the people, are the product. Whatever privacy and other protections put into place will be the minimal palatable to keep the product engaged.
    Farmers maintain a minimum Quality of Life for animals so that they can be managed. This is generally kept at the commercially minimal level so the animals don't die, and produce the optimal quantity and quality of product.
    Facebook is no different.

    --
    WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  8. Time to Update the Quote by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2
    Even kings did not used to be able to do this. To update the famous quote from Omar Khayyam:

    The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it, but thy request to Mr. Zuckerberg can obliterate it from history if he wills it.