Does Deleting Data Make Facebook More Private?

On Instant Message, host David Pierce and his colleagues look at a Facebook plan to delete more data by default, including messages after a month or a year, and to make disappearing Stories the norm. One encouragement is governments: if a government demands the data and Facebook can say it no longer has it, Facebook is in a stronger position. They doubt the change protects users. A reporter argues Facebook may not need a year of history to target ads, because the useful signal is what you do in the moment. Airbnb, they note, judges trust from behavior on the spot. Copying a feature from Signal is not the same thing as becoming a private product.