[randallsquared]

It's going to take a long time, though, before it really sinks in to the general population that you cannot reliably remove access to data. In the interim, we'll continue to have lots of hand-wringing and legal flailing about, which makes this whole space uncertain for companies too large to move offshore and too small to throw lobbyists at the problem.

[mcav]

It may take a while to sink in, but even if it does, the general public probably won't care enough to change their behavior. People want instant gratification; they'll see it at most as a gamble: "What are the odds that this company will do something wrong with my data?"... or at worst, they'll just ignore the risk of consequences completely, like many people do in daily life.

[prodigal_erik]

Which of course is the wrong question. The right question is "what are the odds that someone will acquire this company so that they can do something wrong to all its users?"

[randallsquared]

I actually assume that expectations will change, rather than behavior. People who grow up in a world where it's obvious that anyone who cares to can find out almost anything about them and their life will simply stop having any expectation of 20th-century-era privacy. The middle ground between secret and public is shrinking fast, and I think it will mostly cease to exist soon.

[mike-cardwell]

This is true. Not being able to completely "unshare" data is not something people generally consider before sharing.