You may be referring to "hiding your data from your own view" ...
For SoMe and other organizations that have very large databases it is a very common procedure (if not outright "best practice") to NOT delete anything, but in stead "mark as deleted". The data is still there, it is just no longer visible.
Of course such a practice means that your data (even if you think you have deleted it) is still vulnerable to all the standard (and non-standard) issues, from internal data mining over data breaches to governmental requests, etc.
The only surefire way to avoid exposing yourself is to avoid interacting with these services at all.
You may be referring to "hiding your data from your own view" ...
For SoMe and other organizations that have very large databases it is a very common procedure (if not outright "best practice") to NOT delete anything, but in stead "mark as deleted". The data is still there, it is just no longer visible.
Of course such a practice means that your data (even if you think you have deleted it) is still vulnerable to all the standard (and non-standard) issues, from internal data mining over data breaches to governmental requests, etc.
The only surefire way to avoid exposing yourself is to avoid interacting with these services at all.