Hmm, a clear history feature that does nothing of the sort. Sounds like Facebook!<p>The product manager in charge said: “people were able to mentally connect that with how their browser controls work, where they can clear their history. We clearly state that … the information isn’t connected to your account.” [0]<p>So, they deliberately designed it to make people think it works like a browser's clear history feature (which does delete everything), but instead, it 'disconnects' the data (but doesn't delete anything).<p>Such a bunch of weasels.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/20/facebook-launches-clear-history-tool-but-it-wont-delete-anything" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/20/facebook-...</a>
Ugh, this just reads so slimy. Like, "Occasionally, businesses share that data with Facebook." or "We sometimes receive information from businesses that use third-party data..." Like it just happens to occur. 'Yep, It's just a natural process, buddy, like the sun rising. It just happens. But we're here to help you deal with this mysterious problem, because we're the good guys!' There's so much grossness to opt out of in the modern world. Thank god for GDPR and CCPA.
'The off-Facebook activity setting isn't currently available to you right now.'<p>Smart, announcing it without it being usable, so when it's silently rolled out later people will have forgotten about it. Never change, FB.
This is the clear history feature that was announced a year ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16969325" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16969325</a>. See also the engineering post that explains some of the challenges in implementing this: <a href="https://engineering.fb.com/data-infrastructure/off-facebook-activity/" rel="nofollow">https://engineering.fb.com/data-infrastructure/off-facebook-...</a>
Lately I've been thinking that the phrase "your data" is a deceptive use of language. It encourages the fantasy that you have some kind of ownership over the data that your actions produce. And that you have some natural right to control how it is used.<p>The reality is that once data leaves your device, it's not yours anymore. It will almost certainly be used to track and manipulate you. If someone is talking about giving you control over "your data", it should be a signal that they intend to do the opposite. (like the OP).<p>Maybe we need to give up this fantasy of "your data" before we can embrace technologies such as ad-blocking, encryption, and frankly abstaining from using abusive software.
This seems nearly useless. It doesn't remove the data when you clear it. It simply "disconnects it from your user ID". But we've seen before that the collected data has so much personally identifiable information in it, that the user ID isn't needed anyway. So in reality, this does nothing. And Facebook absolutely knows this.
In the video she said that the website sends data about you to Facebook. This is incorrect. Facebook is the one doing the collecting or the purchasing of your data from 3rd party collectors.<p>I try to post this on every Facebook related post: Leave Facebook. You'll thank yourself a year from now.
This is a good step but it'll probably be something that won't be pushed widely by Facebook themselves but pointed to by them to regulators, saying 'look, we do care!'
All I want is a clear answer from someone at facebook. Why can't I choose to delete data about me from your database? I don't even nec need to be able to see it or do it at a granular level, though that would be nice. All I want to be able to do is say delete this.<p>Can I delete a private message from your database?<p>Can I delete your record of a status I wrote from your database?<p>Can I delete access logs from a website that was using a FB pixel from your database?
I'm glad Facebook chose the name that they did. Hopefully enough people will ask, "<i>why does Facebook care about my activity off Facebook?</i>"
Facebook deleted a ton of the really valuable ad settings controls I used to prevent bad advertiser behavior somewhat recently. I'd rather have that ability to block advertisers uploading data I didn't give them than this feature.<p>And all they'd have to do is turn it back on.
Wait how can I set my preferences for the activity they're tracking on me if I don't have an account?<p>I'm not under any illusions they're not trying to track me despite me not having an account with them.
As a good practice, does the user have to go to this page and “clear history” everyday, akin to brushing one’s teeth? Who’d even do that (not taking about brushing one’s teeth)?<p>Why not make it like a permanent toggle that says “never associate off-Facebook activity with my account (to advertise to me and sell me stuff I don’t need)”?<p>I don’t see anyone being creeped out or annoyed by “backpack ads” (as seen in that dramatization video of this feature) and still being ok with seeing continuous creepy and annoying ads for shoes or something else later.
This sounds so similar to the engineering of the notifications UI they have done over the past few years. When they say they’ve “given users more control”, yes, they’ve added toggles to that screen, but they’ve engineered the whole thing to take control away and force people into an all or nothing decision where Facebook has the ability to serve you a notification when they feel like you should be engaging.
So I've all but given up on trusting these big corporations to delete all of my data when I turn off data collection/clear history.<p>However, I think these activity tools are extremely useful. They allow me to see all (or at least most) of what Facebook/Google has on me and it allows me to practice and implement strategies that prevent the corps from collecting the data in the first place.
Translations from their FAQs:<p>> If I disconnect my activity, will I stop seeing ads?<p>No.<p>> Does disconnecting my activity mean that it's deleted?<p>No.<p>> Why am I seeing businesses I don't recognise?<p>Because they are creepier than you thought.
Who is going to see this that isn't a nerd checking out places like HN like all of us? This doesn't seem like a real effort to aid user privacy, if it was it should be something that pops up in every facebook user's face, not an article you have to search for.<p>Facebooks attempts at making up for their mistakes almost always leave me feeling worse about the company
For Android, privacytools.io advises Blokada. It is an app that runs a sort of local pihole which enables it to block trackers in any app, not just a web browser. I don’t have an android phone myself, but I was very impressed when I tried it out on someone else’s.<p>Is there a similar for iOS that anyone is aware of?
Here is a dirty GDPR secret: HDFS is an append-only filesystem. It's way too hard to delete things in big data projects, so they get disconnected instead.
>If you'd like, you can disconnect that information from your account, and it will not be associated with you personally.
Specifically no mention that they will delete the data, helpfully combined with no mention that it's trivial to deanonymise such data.<p>TL;DR: This is a bullshit PR piece to assuage worries that Facebook data-mining the internet. They still are. Move along.
Facebook just happens to get sent data... yeah, more like Facebook buys data. And invests heavily in tools to make it easier for its customers to send Facebook data.
> If you’d like, you can disconnect that information from your account, and it will not be associated with you personally.<p>“But we still keep it and the entire unique fingerprint”
Please create a facebook account so we can track you^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h help "you" can "control" how we make ads from our abuse of your privacy<i>.<p></i> We aren't going to stop tracking you, and "bugs" and "inadvertent" changes may "accidentally" reset your settings.
as a non-FB user, do these browser settings keep FB from tracking me?<p>block all 3rd party cookies, block all trackers, clear cookies on exit, uBlock Origin extension,<p>and blocking FB related sites in /etc/hosts file
How does this work in terms of GDPR? If it’s only rolled out in a few countries, surely this is Facebook admitting they collect this data but we have no way to access it right now?<p>Shouldn’t this incur a rather heavy fine?
Hey Guys,<p>We here at Facebook realized you don't trust our apps, so we made another app that makes you think our apps are safe. Despite this just being another app within our portfolio of tracking tools. Please download and install, otherwise the other apps may not work eventually. Trust us. ಠ_ಠ
Facebook can receive whatever they deserve, but let's clap our hands on their development team. React is what currently puts bread on my table and it seems like it will do so for a long time. I can't think of a single big win from a social network in spending their money for R&D than FB ( look at LinkedIn for example ).