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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Why does Facebook think it has the right to remove years of their users' contributions?

Huh? We're talking about Facebook refusing to keep reposting stuff from another site. That seems like exactly the opposite of the stuff Facebook might have some responsibility for, if it did have responsibility for stuff.

I mean, obviously, it's ambiguous whether Facebook is a repository, a gate-keeper, a community, a blogging-site or what. But the situation of stuff being reposted from other sites seems to be the least repository like. Deleting years of stuff that might not exist in other places would certainly be much more draconian.

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> We're talking about Facebook refusing to keep reposting stuff from another site.

We're talking about how Facebook not only turned off the API that enabled reposting, but removed all past posts that were made via that API. Which, at that point, was exactly the kind of user data that they had responsibility for.

Well the good news is that Facebook seems to be incapable of actually deleating anything so I’m sure this data is not lost forever ;)

> We're talking about how Facebook not only turned off the API that enabled reposting, but removed all past posts that were made via that API.

No, they cut off the API. The old posts were still there, and tied to the apps that were used to send them. When Twitter then killed their app (apparently, because it wouldn't be usable going forward and in ignorance of the way existing posts were tied to it), then the old posts that were made through that app were deleted. Not because they had used the API, but because they were associated with a removed app.

I'd assume posts made with the API would exist still on Twitter.

The fb discussion threads those posts initiated are gone, though.

If this happened to me I'd be extremely upset: I've had many very good discussions on Facebook that it would hurt to lose.

I assume you haven’t downloaded a copy for yourself yet?

I would not assume Facebook has any duty to maintain historical posts. That would be up to the TOS.

Legally, they do not, of course. But it's generally considered rude to do something like that with zero warning.

Another angle is that I would like to have the right to demand that FB remove any and all mention of me, my handle(s), or posts I have made on any non-FB property.

I would want to ensure that FB can't host data which I submit to twitter/reddit/HN without providing me the authority to be able to request its removal from FB.

I'd think that this could set some precedent to allow for this.

Clearly, though, the FB anti-stance would be that it cannot do so in such granular fashion, which clearly is not true given the fact that any data/posts are tied to both source site and source person...

This is a point I hadn't considered.

I'm guessing it may be temporary. Either a by-product of change or intentional(wipe Facebook of the tweets to drive home the message they've eliminated this feature, then silently start displays the old ones in a few months). Seems unlikely that Facebook deleted something.

> I've had many very good discussions on Facebook that it would hurt to lose.

I genuinely don't mean to be snarky, but that's a surprise. I have literally zero Facebook discussions I even remember, let alone "would hurt to lose".

> Deleting years of stuff that might not exist in other places would certainly be much more draconian.

This is exactly what the report says they did. The original post may exist on Twitter, but the conversation that happened on Facebook does not.

I just checked my feed, and my Twitter posts do seem to still be on my FB profile, at least when I look at it.

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