Comment on Apparently Palantir can access the content of social media accounts that were deleted a decade ago.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 days agoI think even Facebook said years ago it’s less taxing on the systems to unlink content rather than delete it.
Liz@midwest.social 2 days ago
Yeah but that’s basically how deleting works for any normal system. You remove the pointer telling the computer where the data is, then you flag that section of data as free for writing to. It’s not until something writes over the data is it truly gone.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
That’s not what’s happening here.
Think of a database where nothing is editable. You can only add additional data. So you can’t delete a post you can only add a deleted = true flag.
Much easier to keep this kind of database in sync.
Liz@midwest.social 2 days ago
Ah gotcha, very bogus. Kinda speaks to how cheap storage is, doesn’t it?
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
It’s true except in a filesystem you lose the name and location and it can be overwritten. In this instance it sounded like they just prevent access but keep all that data there, still accessible and readable and wont be overwritten.