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.