The trust is gone. They shouldn't have waited until they were caught red-handed to come up with some numbers. Doesn't even matter if it's correct now. No one will believe them.
Why?
Would it be legally contrary to shareholder value? I think this is a terrific idea for all of them to do. Zuck and the others appear genuinely upset from Snowden disclosure blowback and are frustrated at reclaiming their user's trust. These may be their best cred ROI. Perhaps someone experienced could organize this. EFF ...itself?(?!)
The government has already shown us how they are fully capable of lying, and even worse - forcing companies under their control to lie.
The sucking sound we're hearing is trust in anything related to five eyes related corporate infrastructure having any integrity at all.
It was very obvious that the companies were told exactly what to say. They might not be lying in a grammatical legal sense if you parse their words, but they were clearly told by someone how to deny everything.
The government can, and does, lie.
The government can NOT force other companies to lie. Nor is the claim that Facebook & others are under the governments control remotely supported by anything resembling evidence.
Until we're sure that intelligence agencies can't lie at senate hearings, secret courts and laws don't exist, and we're sure the government can't force CEOs to lie, we just can't be sure
And until foreigners get the same right to at least a judge overseeing a warrant we're going to see a move away from US companies no matter where in the world they are.
To decrease the mistrust.
Facebook hasn't been fully trustworthy for a long time, if ever. That's normal - I don't think any company really is.
Why is this surprising to anyone? I mean, bloody hell, anyone who's watched Law & Order should know that there are lawful procedures for these things.
Of course the public didn't find out what was going on in Auschwitz until the end of the war.
Go have a look at your friends list, see how many accounts are inactive but still listed. Most people I've done this come in around the 10-15% of contacts in that inactive state.
Mine has been growing slowly with most people not reactivating accounts. It started out around 5% a year or so ago, and was headed upto towards 15% before I just deleted a bunch of them and screwed my metrics.
Doing that should give you a metric you can start to track yourself without taking anyone else's word for it.
An interesting this I've noticed is with married couples, the less socially motivated of the pair will usually close there account and get there partner to do all the leg work for them. Generally its the husband that closes the account, but sometimes, in the case of my mother, its sometimes the wife that closes.
My mother did something novel I thought for handling family photos. She has started uploading them into a shared drop box account. I literally get notifications while I'm sitting at work that new photos have been sync'ed. I'm quite enjoying that form of photo sharing ATM.
Do you think there is a link between people "trusting" Facebook (whatever that would mean) and people not closing their accounts?