It would be interesting to try to send Facebook a DMCA take-down notice if they undelete your content.
But wait. What if another person's privacy settings preclude one's ability to know if people have shared my content or not, and/or whether those people deleted it?
Doesn't that place Facebook in a realm of ultimate deniability with respect to whether or not they are still in lawful possession of this implicit IP License?
Case in point:
1. I upload a scandalous and controversial image, accidentally.
2. I have a friend, who can see the album that contains the
image. [thus it is "shared"]
3. This "friend" immediately shares it. [satisfying the
requisite logical AND whereby it is simultaneously both
shared and not yet deleted by them]
4. The friend UNFRIENDS me (OH NOES!), and locks me out of
viewing anything related to their account.
5. I delete the image, believing that I am revoking the
implicit IP License.
6. Unbeknownst to me, Facebook retains an IP License by virtue
of the fact that someone else has not deleted the image.
7. Due to Facebook's policy, they are bound by their own
privacy obligations to the other user, to withhold from me
information regarding WHO still possesses the image, and
will not tell me HOW they are able to claim lawful
possession of an IP License for the image I am trying to
revoke.
8. I am stuck in the very limbo that OP is complaining about,
whereby Facebook claims to have an implicit License to
publish content, but will refuse to disclose the evidence
of who has yet to delete the image, as prove that their own
license is derived by the actions of another.
9. In theory, this other user might very well "forget" their
Facebook password (whoopsie! but innocently, and certainly
not as revenge...) and lock themselves out of their own
account. In this manner Facebook now entitles themselves to
the IP rights of this image in perpetuity, without the
potential for revocation, because thei refuse to unlock the
sharer's account without adequate proof.
Like, simply by virtue of sharing, any person who then accesses the content and then re-shares it and refuses to delete it, is then acting as the de-facto rights holder from which all of Facebook's privileges are derived.
But by letting another Facebook user access your shared content, as a peer, it's not immediately clear where that peer truly derives their eternal permission to forever re-share everything they ever had access to as your friend. Why does that person possess eternal rights to share YOUR content on Facebook, simply by being listed as your friend? Where does that part come from? Isn't that behavior enabled by Facebook? And doesn't Facebook reserve the right to redefine how things are "shared" at will? So then, doesn't that mean that Facebook is enabling itself?
Doesn't it seem like there is strong potential for a conflict of interest between Facebook and the other two parties involved?
It says that their license to display the image is subject to your privacy settings. Simply setting the image to Only You doesn't remove the image, but would ensure no one can see it. It effectively revokes Facebook's license to show the image to all your friends. If none of your friends can view it, they cannot share it, and it should remove any of their previous shares. Then you can delete it.
EDIT: Come to think of it, I have a feeling that "unless your content has been shared with others" behaves more narrowly in practice than it could by reading the text. Probably, it would apply to edges cases beyond Facebook's reasonable control - like a notification of a picture to a phone. The app only checks for updates every so often, and it may be out of service for a while, but a thumbnail is sent. You could delete the image, but until they check Facebook's servers, the person has effective control over the thumbnail, which is a derivative work of your copyrighted image, legally. Facebook is just covering their bases there.
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
I think this violates the grant that the user is giving Facebook. If they deleted the content, it's supposed to be gone - Facebook no longer has a license to display it on their site. Facebook has, in public communications, stated that the qualification there is about their messages where you could send effectively an email to another person and both sides have to delete the message - just like with email.
As human beings, we should do a lot of things for pragmatic purposes. That doesn't make it good. In a certain way, it's like knowing that you live in a neighborhood with a criminal and "well, I guess it's my fault that I didn't lock my door or even bothered to go out of the house."
I'm all for Facebook changing to try and do new things, but sometimes there's a lack of consent that's disturbing given that Facebook has been telling users to expect control over their sharing. We've seen articles about the ability for third parties to add you to a group and for that adding to be advertized to your friends. I understand that we should consider anything we post to Facebook public. However, Facebook has strongly encouraged us to put things we don't want public on Facebook with an assurance of privacy. As such, I don't think it's unreasonable to rake Facebook over the coals over this (if it's true). It's the type of bad behavior that should be admonished.
I'm certainly not arguing that companies need to do what their users want or anything like that. However, we call out bad companies as bad. In this case, it looks like they're even violating their own ToS (if the story is true). If Facebook had started out like Tumblr or Twitter or Geocities where you're really trying to post public content, it would be one thing. Facebook didn't start out that way and, in fact, encouraged us to think of them as protecting private content. Let's say Google decided to sell or publicly display your email tomorrow. We'd admonish that. It's a violation without your permission. Is the reason we should consider things posted to Facebook as public that we've seen Facebook be scummy for years now and should have learned that their promises are nonsense?
I don't think you're wrong or anything. I just think that "buyer beware" or "well, you shouldn't have rented an apartment in that neighborhood" are great ways to look at it.
* P.S. Nothing in this comment is meant to cast judgement on whether or not Facebook is doing the things the article accuses them of. I haven't researched it. It's simply to note that Facebook portrays itself as both 1. not sharing your content further than you allow and 2. allowing you to remove content other than things like messages which might be in someone else's inbox. If they're violating that, they're violating what they're telling users.