Top all-time · #1368
Ruben Verborgh
Personal blog · ruben.verborgh.orgwebdata
Ruben Verborgh's personal blog at ruben.verborgh.org covers web and data. Since 2012, 51 different Hacker News readers have linked it 80 times, most often “Getting my personal data out of Facebook”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers mostly link Ruben Verborgh's Facebook page documenting unanswered GDPR data access requests, cited as evidence in many threads. Other links are to his posts on Solid and the decentralised web.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Helped one commenter understand Solid; called 'a nice post' and 'a great article'; a legally-actionable access request.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ruben Verborgh is a professor of data & AI. Read all about his mission on his homepage.
Most-linked posts?
- Getting my personal data out of Facebook19 people · 32 mentions · first linked 2019-05-20
- Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2017-12-28
- A data ecosystem fosters sustainable innovation3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-12-10
- Facebook refuses to follow GDPR regulations by spewing nonsense and lies2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-02-13
- Trust takes time (2024)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-10-15
- The lie of the API2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-29
- Reflections of knowledge – Apps and APIs on the decentralized Web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-23
- REST, where's my state?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-24
- Designing a Linked Data developer experience2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-08
- Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-11
What Hacker News says?
… What? No, they aren't. https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ Clearly less than "everything they can".
Comment linking /facebook/
on “Facebook account now required to login to Oculus devices”Submitted Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time as a story · 527 points
HN discussionNote that Facebook happily ignores Subject Access Requests with complete impunity: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/
Comment linking /facebook/
on “533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online”Submitted Getting my personal data out of Facebook as a story · 303 points
HN discussionFacebook's tracking consent flow has been in breach since the regulation went into effect in 2018, and has affected millions of people, both users and non-users. Keep in mind that had Facebook been compliant with the GDPR, the recent Apple changes regarding tracking consent on iOS wouldn't have been an issue for them at all. I'd argue this is a much bigger issue than the lack of at-rest data encryption, and yet noth…
Comment linking /facebook/
on “533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online”Submitted The lie of the API as a story · 148 points
HN discussionFacebook looks to be willingly not following most of GDPR https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/
Comment linking /facebook/
on “DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts”Submitted Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web as a story · 107 points
HN discussionFacebook doesn't really comply with the GDPR. The data displayed on this new page wasn't part of their data export and I'm sure is still not part of it. Here's an example to what extents they will go in order to not give you what you're entitled to by law: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ In fact, if they were GDPR compliant, they wouldn't be collecting this data in the first place.
Comment linking /facebook/
on “Off-Facebook activity”Submitted Getting my personal data out of Facebook as a story · 58 points
HN discussionAnd Facebook will promptly ignore that too: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/
Comment linking /facebook/
on “The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned”Submitted Reflections of knowledge – Apps and APIs on the decentralized Web as a story · 32 points
HN discussionYou'll be surprised to hear that developers like Linked Data. People starting with Linked Data development today are not burdened by the Semantic Web legacy and mistakes of the past. We've been working with front-end devs who have never seen RDF, and never will. They enjoy how Linked Data is able to cross borders and leads to more data than a centralized database could ever give you. The confusion in your comment is…
Comment linking /blog/2018/12/28/designing-a-linked-data-developer-experience/
on “Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time”Submitted Facebook refuses to follow GDPR regulations by spewing nonsense and lies as a story · 21 points
HN discussionTechnologically, yes. But centralization takes many shapes (as I explain in the article: https://ruben.verborgh.org/articles/redecentralizing-the-web... ). I encourage you to read the article, where you'll see that I'm arguing from a permissionless innovation perspective, not so much privacy.
Comment linking /articles/redecentralizing-the-web/
on “Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time”Submitted A data ecosystem fosters sustainable innovation as a story · 15 points
HN discussionhttps://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ Facebook claims that the data they have on people cannot be understood by the average person, and because the GDPR requirements state that data needs to be given in an easily understood format, giving this data would violate the law. So they refuse to give it. This was after months of simply ignoring the requests. Seriously.
Comment linking /facebook/
on “Facebook collecting people's data even when accounts are deactivated”Submitted The Semantic Web identity crisis: in search of the trivialities that never were as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI was recently looking for evidence of Facebook actually responding adequately to a subject access request and failed to find any. I did find evidence of them refusing [0] though, and simply failing [1]. [0] https://thedataprivacygroup.com/blog/facebook-refuses-subjec... [1] https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/
Comment linking /facebook/
on “Facebook Disabled My Account After I Criticized Them”Submitted Getting my personal data out of Facebook as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou mean something like this?: https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2017/12/20/paradigm-shifts-f...
Comment linking /blog/2017/12/20/paradigm-shifts-for-the-decentralized-web/
on “A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe”Submitted Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web (2017) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf this [0] is not legally-actionable and formal way of stating one's data access request, then I don't know what is. ---- [0] https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/emails/2019-11-16-sar/
Comment linking /facebook/emails/2019-11-16-sar/
on “Facebook Dating launch blocked in Europe after it fails to show privacy workings”Submitted The Lie of the API (2013) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionOnly one week and regulatory forces managed to push back?! I wonder when someone from the same regulatory forces will help Ruben out: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ He's been waiting for over a year now for his actual dataset - fighting for us all.
Comment linking /facebook/
on “Facebook Dating launch blocked in Europe after it fails to show privacy workings”Submitted Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web (2017) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis post[0] by Ruben Verborgh helped me understand the problem Solid is trying to solve: > In December 2019, Google and Facebook proudly announced a major milestone, which was echoed in news media all around the world: it is now possible to copy a picture from Facebook to Google Photos. This news came in mere months after we celebrated the 50th anniversary of another technological feat: the moon landing of 20 July…
Comment linking /blog/2020/12/07/a-data-ecosystem-fosters-sustainable-innovation/
on “Solid Project: All of your data, under your control”Submitted Promiscuous Promises as a story · 3 points
HN discussion1) I am a big fan of the general philosophy of Solid. But as others have mentioned, I've found it extremely difficult to understand specifics of the proposal or to see concrete progress, based on publicly available resources. The best place I've found is Ruben Verborgh's blog (he's a researcher who's affiliated with Solid). For example here's a nice post which goes into more detail on the ideas behind Solid: https:/…
Comment linking /blog/2017/12/20/paradigm-shifts-for-the-decentralized-web/
on “Solid Project: All of your data, under your control”Submitted The Lie of the API as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
