"I don't understand why porn websites have a +1 under the videos? Why would I want anyone to know I use Google+?"

(More than just Cassandra tho, many databases don't actually "delete", at least not immediately. They "mark for deletion", and may or may not _actually ever delete_ anything.)

The database not actually deleting is still the application properly deleting it. If the DB eventually carries that out or not is a lesser concern to me, tbh.

The concern here is that facebook doesn't actually tombstone their entries or doesn't even have their DB mark it deleted.

I am sure they aren't purging backups of the data.

What if hacker deletes your Facebook account? Under GDPR Facebook has actually obligation to keep your data safe from this scenario. Which means they have to keep logs to investigate what happened and also be able to restore your data.

You should delete backups after certain amount of time and state your policy to users.

You can't keep indefinite backups and comply with GDPR.

So if your 5 year old backup, which has no purpose at all, gets stolen, expect a whopping fine for being an idiot. Or your web logs get stolen and it turns out you keep them 2 years, don't expect favourable treatment as that's totally unnecessary data retention.

I'd happily put down $50 for whoever spilled the beans on what is really going on at Facebook and other companies in that vein.

https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower

"your account".

What do you reckon is the chance of them removing this from their ad targeting data set "account"??? They're just going to give you a tool that shows some of it to you, then hides it from you when you click the [fuck me over more] button (and they'll record _that_ interaction too, and sell you to the "tinfoil" and "headwear" segments.

is there a chance smaller than zero?

Since the GDPR covers people in the EU that means if you're in the US you can take a vacation to Italy or France or Germany and then pull that stunt on Facebook. (technically)

Political farce aside, he does have a point, cookies are fundamentally tokens of persistence. Persistent cookies let you configure the websites without creating accounts and stay logged in on the websites you do have accounts on. Loosing that is inconvenient which means it will make parts of the experience worse.

Believe me, "my Facebook" isn't very good with the feed with five years worth of tracking... At least I can have my crappy feed with more of a peace of mind, that's a net win, right?

The idea was that you would have access via Facebook to all the potentially interested people that dropped off because your landing page or product were not yet ready for launch.

From Facebook's perspective, this is data that is valuable to potential customers that want to buy ad space.

I know, Poe's Law, etc. etc., but I'm truly surprised at the amount of comments missing the dripping sarcasm from this last line of the post. Especially since the adjective "tracking" was used to describe the pixels. I will say that English is my native language though and HN is a diverse group.

Are you being sarcastic? I can think of several reasons Zuck wouldn't want people clearing their cookies. The primary one being the loss (even though temporary) of data resolution for targeting ads.

The unique views problem is interesting from a marketing perspective though. I doubt it will change much but for larger companies it might require adjustment.

Also interesting that they are allowing a theoretical cap on the information they collect. I imagine they'll be moving more into services to avoid future data privacy issues. That means B2B too, FYI...

Because that would be the end of a gigantic portion of Facebook ad revenue - which should scare users (if they like Facebook) as well. Without the pixel, Facebook ads will be the joke they were when they were first introduced - hardly effective and a money losing proposition for advertisers. A few big brand advertisers that don’t care about ROI might stick around, but everyone else will leave.

They can still build profiles orders of magnitude more relevant than, say, Google. The web tracking is just an optimization to get the types of data Google has, too.

Retargeting is not just an optimization. For many advertisers, it's the saving grace of the Facebook ads system that produced absurdly poor results before it was introduced. Facebook ads were the brunt of jokes back then, and it will return to that status if too many people use this feature.