Yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818

I mean come on, let's not be coy here: Mark Zuckerberg literally can access and manipulate any Facebook data he wants. That's kind of his entire MO.

If you said this about Jeff Bezos and data on AWS, you'd be wrong. That's a bit apples-to-oranges, but what I mean is being an executive in a company does not entail access to customer data retained by the company.

I don't expect Facebook to be a good data steward, but they certainly could be. Not to AWS's extent (Facebook can't turn a profit without reading your unencrypted content, currently), but to a minimal extent at least...

Then again, whose trust are they trying to earn?

They need to maintain the trust of the marginal user.

It’s going to be fun to spectate and guess where the network effect breaking point might be.

Sure, but AWS makes money from being paid to host data securely. Facebook and other social networks make money by selling your data, so it inherently comes with an amount of transparency to function as a marketable product.

I agree completely.

Did FB really think it was going to remain a secret? "Unsending" messages that have already been read by the recipient is difficult to hide, and especially when you're the CEO of FB one of those past recipients is going to pick up on it pretty quickly.

Either FB knew and does not care, or their PR folks are completely incompetent (or in the dark), or hubris at the highest levels.

Third option: Zuckerberg said, “just fucking do it,” and they just fucking did it. Total control is very much a double edged sword, especially when the person in control seems to have only a tenuous grasp of human nature.

Or lawyers made the decision as part of their “document retention” policy, and no one spent much time thinking about the repercussions.

What exactly is the problem here? Why shouldn't the CEO of a company have special capabilities? He owns it after all.

You'll be outraged to learn restaurant owners often make things for themselves that's not on the menu.

So your bank manager can dip into your account?

Your bank could put a line at the top of your statement that reads:

SPECIAL HAPPY NEW YEAR MESSAGE FROM FACEBANK $0.00

and then come February they realise they look pretty stupid so they take it out of the statement (web page). No one would care too much.

Nope, that would violate the agreement made between you and your bank.

So you think someone removing something he posted is the same as someone taking money off someone?

OK, I would have done it too. This is a 0.01 on a 1-10 scale. Messages over the years, at 2am or 1pm can be taken out of context and so on and here you have one of the richest people on earth. Of course he could've said "my assistants wrote it" but un-sending does not do much bad to the receiver.

Can't they just claim it's an upcoming feature they are testing internally before release, that will be rolled out soon?

irony: http://nordic.businessinsider.com/facebook-delete-sent-messa...

I really want there to be a simple benign explanation for this. Like, maybe this is a new privacy-first feature, and Zuck was simply dogfooding it internally, just like with every feature before it gets rolled out.

"That wasn't Zuck abusing his power! That was, er, a new feature we were going to implement!"

Uh huh. Sure, Facebook. And you call them "steamed hams" despite the fact that they are obviously grilled.

Is it possible this violates Facebook's consent decree? If they need opt in consent to share information, and need to actually delete information when requested, it would logically follow that deleting information without a user's consent is not kosher.

Repost. Also, more dead horse beating?

Right now someone, somewhere, is complaining that "the media" has ignored this very event.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Some dead horses are worth beating.

It's not dead yet!