[Facebook] Deleted only a handful of posts

[SaptakS]

Based on a bug report, only a handful of user's post got deleted and even after trying a second time, there were 0 more posts deleted. All the other posts are still not deleted.

[micahflee]

Here's more information about at least one occurrence of this bug.

First, in the Manage Posts page, in the latest month there was only one post, and it couldn't be deleted. The action description is:

You can untag yourself from or hide the posts selected.

When the tester looks at their manage posts screen, they only have one most every few months:

[micahflee]

I have a theory about this. The Facebook Manage Posts dialog lets you do three things in bulk:

• Hide posts
• Remove tags
• Delete posts

Right now we're only supporting "Delete posts", and skipping posts that cannot be deleted. For example if you update your profile picture or cover photo, you can't delete those updates, but you can hide them. And if someone tags you in a post, you can't delete their post but you can untag yourself.

Each time you select a post, it says one of these things (possibly more? but these are what I know of):

• You can hide or delete the posts selected.
• You can hide the posts selected.
• You can untag yourself from or hide the posts selected.

We want to delete as much as possible. Next, we want to untag as much as possible. And finally, we want to hide the rest.

I think we need to update the algorithm to work like this:

• load the profile page
• while true:
  • click manage posts
  • loop through the items
    • check the item and keep track of the possible actions (like ['hide', 'delete'], ['hide'], or ['untag', hide])
    • track the highest priority action: delete, then untag, then hide
      • if we see ['hide', 'delete'], then highest priority is delete
      • if we see ['untag', 'hide'], then highest priority is untag
      • if we see ['hide'], then highest priority is hide
    • check the next item and see if the highest priority changes
      • if not, continue checking boxes
      • if so, uncheck and go back
    • at this point, we have as many checked at the highest priority as we can
    • click next, select the highest priority action, and click done
    • reload profile page for next batch

Let's say we have the posts with the following possible actions listed in reverse chronological order under Manage Posts:

1. hide, delete
2. untag, hide
3. hide
4. hide, delete
5. hide, delete
6. untag, hide
7. untag, hide
8. untag, hide
9. hide, delete
10. hide, delete
11. hide
12. hide
13. hide, delete

Then the algorithm should work like this:

• load profile page and click manage posts
  • select 1, and see the highest priority action is delete
  • select 2, and see the highest priority action changes to untag, so uncheck it
  • click next, choose delete, choose done
  • 1 is deleted
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • select 2, and see the highest priority action is untag
  • select 3, and see the highest priority action changes to hide, so uncheck it
  • click next, choose untag, choose done
  • _2 is untagged
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • select 3, and see the highest priority action is hide
  • select 4, and see the highest priority action changes to delete, so uncheck it
  • click next, choose hide, choose done
  • 3 is hidden
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • select 4, and see the highest priority action is delete
  • select 5, and see the highest priority action is delete
  • select 6, and see the highest priority action is untag, so uncheck it
  • click next, choose delete, choose done
  • 4 and 5 are deleted
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • select 6, and see the highest priority action is untag
  • select 7, and see the highest priority action is untag
  • select 8, and see the highest priority action is untag
  • select 9, and see the highest priority action is delete, so uncheck it
  • click next, choose untag, choose done
  • 6, 7, and 8 are untagged
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • select 9, and see the highest priority action is delete
  • select 10, and see the highest priority action is delete
  • select 11, and see the highest priority action is hide, so uncheck it
  • click next, choose delete, choose done
  • 9 and 10 are deleted
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • select 11, and see the highest priority action is hide
  • select 12, and see the highest priority action is hide
  • select 13, and see the highest priority action is delete, so uncheck it
  • click next, choose hide, choose done
  • 11 and 12 are hidden
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • select 13, and see the highest priority action is delete
  • we're at the end of the loop, so move on
  • click next, choose delete, choose done
  • 13 is deleted
• reload profile page, and click manage posts
  • there are no posts, so we're done