You're wrong about too many people getting rid of their data. [I work at Facebook]
When I first went through the initial flow of you guys making all of these linked connections. It took me at least 20 minutes trying to get these TV Shows and Bands deleted.
A handful of days later, I was revisiting all of my privacy settings because I don't trust you. Low and behold there are all the TV Shows and Movies that I thought I had deleted still present on my profile.
It turns out I can't remove these connections at all.
I think a lot more people might have gotten rid of their data if they could, if they knew how, or if they knew that: "These settings only control the information people can see on your profile. This information, such as your Pages and list of friends, is still public, so it could appear elsewhere on the site and be accessed by applications you and your friends use."
But I guess duping people with obfuscated engineering and design, coupled with bad (or no) communication with users is just the rule nowadays for you all.
The worst part is--I resisted joining Facebook for so long, didn't join until well after the Beacon fiasco, because I didn't trust the company one bit. It is sad that I was right about this and should have stuck to my guns.
Side note: While typing this I decided to pop over and re-audit my settings for pry the 4-5 time in the past couple weeks. What do you know some values were not the same as what I had made them previously. Seems like the only time I ever have problems with Facebook from an application point of view is when I am trying to delete or change settings.
I don't know what you're talking about in your side note -- if you haven't seen big dialogs popup or messages on the front page, your settings shouldn't change magically. I know we don't always do a great job of communicating exactly what has changed, but we certainly don't change things behind your back, and certainly not maliciously.
As for the side note, no clue what happened exactly. It was the settings for my email field. It should have been friends only, but it was friends of friends instead.
It could be a user error, maybe I inadvertently switched it one of the handful of times I have been checking everything lately. Or some error on your side, I just don't know.
It may have came off conspiratorial, but a few friends and I have both commented on how the only times we run into issues with the Fbook application is when we are trying to delete data or modify settings.(Aside of the chat early in its history) And I was attempting (badly) to convey that observation
Something everybody at Facebook needs to note though: viewing intent as malicious or not is pretty relative to the person and where you are standing. Something a strictly opt -in model can address quite well.
ex: A legitimate business acquires an email list, let's say it is even targeted to people who might want/need their product. They blast out an sales email. To them the intent is not malicious--they are just trying to provide a potential customer with a product or service that might address a need/problem/want in their life.
From a recipients perspective, let's say me, this is a violation of my inbox, my privacy, even my values. Now, regardless of the senders intent or whether the product is good, not only do I not trust them--but I question intent and motives.
I'm quite sure he speaks the truth in an absolute sense. Maybe 50,000 or 100,000 people have canceled, maybe even only 10,000. But that was how every other social network that preceded facebook died off, by the first relatively large group of users that said 'enough'. What goes up quickly can go down just as fast, if any social network that is perceived as 'more secure' and 'less evil' in combination with 'nice to the users' gains traction with those leaving now then this could very well follow the exact same graph that caused FB to grow so fast.
This is not a 'sure thing' by any means, though probably the effect will be limited. Once it starts feeding back on itself or if facebook has one or two more security booboos all bets are off.
Just pointing out here that citations are not a means to an end. You still have to trust the citation - since apparently you don't believe the guy claiming to be from facebook, who would you believe?
I left Facebook a long time ago, and because I didn't trust you (correctly as it turned out) to delete the account, I shoved bad data in there instead. You have no way to know what proportion of other users have done the same.