As I understand it, this wasn't just a simple/typical security breach. The hackers had access to people's accounts and for who knows how long. 50 million people's private conversations and pictures being made public, for example, would be the end of Facebook.

Ironic, because that was the beginning of Facebook. Sort of the whole point was to have public conversations and pictures.

Also I think that would be huge and cause some number of people to quit facebook, but I'm confident it wouldn't be the "end".

you underestimate the nihilistic attitude towards anything facebook vs privacy related. I don't think there is anyone out there who even remotely thinks their doings on FB is private any more, including PMs.

I think you underestimate the extent to which people think their PM's aren't a big deal, until they get released and a torrent of sexting, gossip, illicit relationships, bullying, and public scandal washes over society as fallout.

"I have nothing to hide" is the mantra of fools and people too domesticated to even imagine the ways that malicious crooks and societal pranksters can have it out for them.

I'd consider myself 'tech savvy' and still expect my conversations on Facebook to remain non-public even in the case of security negligence on my part. If anything private is released through this hack, other than hashed passwords or similar (worst case), I'm absolutely done with Facebook and any similar entity.

Which is the simple point I'm making - a worst case scenario here destroys FB's reputation for safely storing your private messages.

If they don't disclose in time, or are found to have been able to have prevented the breach, they could face some serious fines in the EU under GDPR.

At odds with the Armageddon-like comments in the Twitter thread, this is still to be worked out. It is not a certainty.

By "pessimistic" do you mean unrealistically, naively optimistic? (I agree FB will likely suffer face no consequences)

> Why would facebook suffer any consequences from this whatsoever? When has a data breach actually affected the company?

Facebook is too big. It does not play against its customers or users, but against governments and legislation.

Sooner or later legislation is going to catch up with all the potential risks and abuses that Facebooks facilitates. Each misstep takes it closer to an stronger legislation.

For all the big tech companies it is better for themselves to slap on their own hand than to let the government do it.