Deleting Content from Service [closed]

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I'm not quite sure what the real practice is in the programming community. But when a user deletes content from your service (ie. deleting a status update, a photo of theirs, a comment they made). Should I actually delete them from my server or just hide it?

The reason why I am asking this is because we live in a age where the services we build are data hungry. The data is the most valuable aspect of the service you build and keeping everything that comes in is vital. What is the general practice for these type of situations?

What are your recommendations?

Answer 1

You need to follow the Terms of Service (ToS) that you or the application owner have laid out.

If the ToS state that user content will be deleted, then you had better delete the content with the account.

If the ToS claim ownership over the data or anonymized abstraction of the data, then you are not obligated to delete the data.

It's also possible to state that you'll hold the data for N days just in case they decide to re-instate their account. But again, you need to follow the ToS specifying what you'll do with the data after that N days elapses.

As mentioned in a comment, your service needs to be absolutely transparent in explaining:

• what data is collected
• what data is retained and for how long
• what the data is used for
• if the user has any ability to opt out of the data collection
• what will be done with the data if / when the account is deleted
• if / when accounts will automatically be deleted from lack of activity

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You also asked:

The reason why I am asking this is because we live in a age where the services we build are data hungry. The data is the most valuable aspect of the service you build and keeping everything that comes in is vital.

And I'm going to point out that this line of reasoning is completely unrelated to the question of what you should do with the data. The value of the data is completely irrelevant in whether or not you should honor requests to remove the data. Saying that you won't delete the data despite the ToS just because you perceive it to be valuable is a false argument.

Case in point, certain very large social media sites have had their reputation hammered in the past for failing to respect ownership of that information.