Think about it in terms of risk / reward or if you like, shareholder value.
If the value of the data exceeds the fine combined with the risk of it being discovered, the data will continue to exist.
Factor in the cost of actually guaranteeing that deleting something across all online, nearline, offline and archived data stores and the chances of anything being purposely deleted are not high.
Accidental data loss, sure, purposeful data loss, I can’t see it happening.
GDPR fines can reach up to $20 million dollars. That’s not a business expense. That’s quiet a dent in their quarterly balance sheet. And the EU has issued hefty fines in the past. This is not the USA we’re talking about.
In the last quarter of 2024 it shows a net income of $20,838 million. A $20 million fine would change that 3 into a 1 and again, that’s net income for just for three months.
Interesting, when you read that article, it says that Meta will appeal, searching for the GDPR fine and the appeal, all I found was more fines, but no records of the results of any appeals.
Unless someone feels like breaking into a datacenter (and likely several cold backup facilities) and mechanically wiping data, that shit is there forever. Facebook deletes nothing.
“Never Delete Anything” is Standard at every place I’ve worked. What happens is that anything that is requested to be deleted is simply marked as “Deleted” in the database.
Not to discredit or counterpoint what you’re saying… But in some jurisdictions, that’s illegal. As an example, California RTA/RTF laws make it a requirement that some data should be deleted unless there’s a different legal standard requiring the data be kept. Enforcement? Who knows?
Even Reddit doesn’t delete your post(data) when you delete your account. You will have to do it. Yourself first, of you have hundreds of posts or comments
To add, not deleted stuff is what my favorite lawyers call “discoverable”. Not sure how many lawyers Meta has but I’m betting at least one of them is reminding them deleting stuff is a good thing.
I’m going with … never.
That’s illegal in Europe.
And?
And what? The EU has a trackrecord of pretty hefty fines. They won’t risk it for this many users.
Think about it in terms of risk / reward or if you like, shareholder value.
If the value of the data exceeds the fine combined with the risk of it being discovered, the data will continue to exist.
Factor in the cost of actually guaranteeing that deleting something across all online, nearline, offline and archived data stores and the chances of anything being purposely deleted are not high.
Accidental data loss, sure, purposeful data loss, I can’t see it happening.
GDPR fines can reach up to $20 million dollars. That’s not a business expense. That’s quiet a dent in their quarterly balance sheet. And the EU has issued hefty fines in the past. This is not the USA we’re talking about.
Actually GDPR fines can reach 3% of revenue if i recall my compulsory training correctly. That’s a lot more than $20m for farcebook I would expect
It’s up to $20 million or 3%.
I just checked, it’s 4% of revenue and apparently Meta has already had a €1.2 Billion fine yes that B is not a typo.
https://dataprivacymanager.net/5-biggest-gdpr-fines-so-far-2020/
Again, you vastly underestimate the size of Meta.
In the last quarter of 2024 it shows a net income of $20,838 million. A $20 million fine would change that 3 into a 1 and again, that’s net income for just for three months.
Source: https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2025/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2024-Results/default.aspx
How about a $1.2 Billion fine ? Would that perhaps be consequential ?
They got hit with that 2 years ago
https://dataprivacymanager.net/5-biggest-gdpr-fines-so-far-2020/
Interesting, when you read that article, it says that Meta will appeal, searching for the GDPR fine and the appeal, all I found was more fines, but no records of the results of any appeals.
Also, it was €1.2 Billion, not $1.2 Billion.
It’s legal if they irreversibly anonymise it.
So the content you created will still be used to train AI with no consent from or payment to you.
Yup, them “shadow profiles” will become sentient one day
Fuck! Thanks. Anyway my…ummm…friend can have his meta footprint deleted?
Don’t they ressurect dead accounts, and use the ai to post randomly
Unless someone feels like breaking into a datacenter (and likely several cold backup facilities) and mechanically wiping data, that shit is there forever. Facebook deletes nothing.
“Never Delete Anything” is Standard at every place I’ve worked. What happens is that anything that is requested to be deleted is simply marked as “Deleted” in the database.
Not to discredit or counterpoint what you’re saying… But in some jurisdictions, that’s illegal. As an example, California RTA/RTF laws make it a requirement that some data should be deleted unless there’s a different legal standard requiring the data be kept. Enforcement? Who knows?
Even Reddit doesn’t delete your post(data) when you delete your account. You will have to do it. Yourself first, of you have hundreds of posts or comments
The Nuke Reddit History Chrome extension is great for this.
Reddit has a change log of your comments. This does nothing to their underlying data
it doesnt, but rather have all the comments deleted in any case.
To add, not deleted stuff is what my favorite lawyers call “discoverable”. Not sure how many lawyers Meta has but I’m betting at least one of them is reminding them deleting stuff is a good thing.
You mean thermite the drives while the employees are gone for a holiday/lunch?
If your friend is an EU citizen, they might have some luck with a GDPR request to delete all their data.
They also might not. Meta technically would have to comply, but there is no real way to know if they did.
Same response as the EU but for California.