Many Facebook users have typed something on their status bars, only to delete them later without actually posting what they typed. However, this seemingly innocent gesture is actually recorded and stored by Facebook. All of those rants about annoying neighbors or complaints about tough bosses that were typed only to be deleted are actually stored somewhere in Facebook's servers.
It seems that Facebook uses a bit of code that monitors instances where users type and delete something on Facebook. When a user deletes their messages, the code sends the metadata about the post back to Facebook. As for what Facebook does with the data it stores, the answer is simple. First of all, Facebook doesn't actually store the content of a user's aborted status or message. The company only stores meta data about these events, which includes the time the message was typed as well as where the message was typed. For instance, was it typed on a user's own wall or a friend's wall?
According to a paper written by Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. student Sauvik Das and Facebook data scientist Adam Kramer, Facebook is closely monitoring the data because it is in company's best interests that people post messages and generate content on Facebook. The company simply wants to understand why some posts are terminated before they are actually posted.
"Consider, for example, the college student who wants to promote a social event for a special interest group, but he does not for fear of spamming his other friends - some of who may, in fact, appreciate his efforts," says Das and Kramer in their paper about self-censorship on Facebook.
While some people may be alarmed about this development, it is actually indicated in Facebook's Data Use Policy.
"We receive data about you whenever you use or are running Facebook, such as when you look at another person's timeline, send or receive a message, searc for a friend or a page, click on, view or otherwise interact with things, use a Facebook mobile app, or make purchases through Facebook," reads the site's Data Use Policy.
This means that people who use Facebook have already agreed to allow Facebook to collect data on how they use the social network. Specifically, Facebook's Data Use Policy allows the company to collect data on how users "interact with things."
