[BaldricksGhost]

You're not surprised by this? In spite of all the talk in the article about how this was "not that easy" the real reason probably lies in this bit near the end:

"Why can’t Facebook just stop collecting your browsing history entirely? Well, it could, but a large part of Facebook’s business depends on collecting this kind of browsing data, so it would cripple a big revenue stream."

As long as Facebook's business model involves monetizing your data, they are going to slow walk any feature that might impact this.

[fumar]

Advertisers wouldn't want to hear that part of their campaign attribution (on-site conversions) were null because users have the option to remove browsing behavior. Facebook's people-based marketing is why advertisers use them.

[fumar]

I should add context: Facebook has ~20% of the digital advertising marketshare in the US (2018). They are #2 to Google. What both of these two titans give marketers (individual teams within a larger org) is something to brag about. How? Run a campaign for display or video ads in FB or Google and make sure you can tie it to a site action (ideally a conversion of some type). Let that run for a month and then give yourself a big pat on the back. You just drove some cost per action (conversion) number that with some tweaks can improve month over month. Your marketing org is now optimizing! yes! Drive those sales or site visits.

It is a great approach for marketing teams. They grow, look good, claim to drive revenue, try to impact consumer behavior, but it all is dependent on Facebook's (insert any ad platform partner) attribution. So yeah, Facebook will not mess with its attribution. It would make a big mess for both its business and it's client's business.

Marketers's should measure the incremental impact of their marketing buys (get their data science team to manage the study). They will be surprised to see how much display banners or video ads are impacting consumer behavior. Stay away from modeled approaches, try to grade the reporting yourself.

[TAForObvReasons]

The Upton Sinclair quote has never been more relevant:

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

[Zarath]

Funny thing is, clearing browsing history is a signal in itself. It can specify a certain type of person and/or a specific life event that triggered this.

[EpicEng]

And if/when the feature launches I would not at all be surprised to seeing this headline down the road:

"Facebook Clear History doesn't fully erase user data, information later sold to a group of Zombie Nazis bent on world domination."

[denzil_correa]

And it is mentioned as such in the article too that "Clear History =/= Delete History"

> There’s a reason that Clear History isn’t called “Delete History”: Using the feature will disassociate browsing data that Facebook collects from your specific account but it won’t be erased from Facebook’s servers completely, Baser said. Instead it’s just “de-identified,” which means it’s stored by Facebook but no longer tied to the user who created it.

[distant_hat]

At Facebook's granularity of data collection it would be almost trivial to identify a user even if that user's name is not connected with the data.