If you maintain a copy of the data and give them access to it, then you aren't going to lose the data. You've lost control of it, since they can take it and do whatever they want with it, but you'll always have your copy. However, very few web apps work that way. The personal data that goes through Gmail is overwhelmingly generated in Gmail, and Google retains the only copy unless you back up all your data at home. Ditto for Facebook -- the only personal data that people are likely to retain a copy of is photographs, and again, that would only be for backup purposes, except for hobbyists who keep raw files or higher-quality images at home. For most people, Facebook serves as a very reliable repository for their personal snapshots.
We're completely at their mercy for all the data we create in their apps, and therefore we're completely dependent on two things:
1) They want to retain customer trust.
2) They are concerned that they might lose that trust if they misbehave.
They're constantly testing the limits of 2) (intentionally or unintentionally.) At some point 1) could cease to be true. They could become so necessary, or so powerful, that people become cynical about the possibility of defying them, and therefore start accepting abusive behavior.
Another scenario is that they could stop caring about customer trust not because they're too powerful but because customers have already abandoned them. Imagine that in 2022 Facebook is a has-been. It has been beaten in social networking, or social networking sounds ridiculously quaint in 2022, and Facebook is a failing company with no prospects for revival. Kind of like SCO. And it happens to possess, as its only asset, a little bit of intellectual "property" (a decade of personal information on a billion people.) Perhaps, in its death throes, it will go the way of SCO, abandon all moral restraint, and attempt to squeeze a windfall out of that "property" in the most cynical way possible. Maybe they'll charge you a ridiculous fee to retrieve your data in a useable form. If their user agreements make that impossible, someone in the company might go rogue and sell all your private data to a shady entrepreneur in a lawless country. They could sell the photos to Joe Francis and individual account histories to blackmailers and gossips. We know that won't happen today, because Facebook has the resources and the motivation to make sure it doesn't happen, but if the company goes to hell, we won't have those assurances anymore.
We're completely at their mercy for all the data we create in their apps, and therefore we're completely dependent on two things:
1) They want to retain customer trust. 2) They are concerned that they might lose that trust if they misbehave.
They're constantly testing the limits of 2) (intentionally or unintentionally.) At some point 1) could cease to be true. They could become so necessary, or so powerful, that people become cynical about the possibility of defying them, and therefore start accepting abusive behavior.
Another scenario is that they could stop caring about customer trust not because they're too powerful but because customers have already abandoned them. Imagine that in 2022 Facebook is a has-been. It has been beaten in social networking, or social networking sounds ridiculously quaint in 2022, and Facebook is a failing company with no prospects for revival. Kind of like SCO. And it happens to possess, as its only asset, a little bit of intellectual "property" (a decade of personal information on a billion people.) Perhaps, in its death throes, it will go the way of SCO, abandon all moral restraint, and attempt to squeeze a windfall out of that "property" in the most cynical way possible. Maybe they'll charge you a ridiculous fee to retrieve your data in a useable form. If their user agreements make that impossible, someone in the company might go rogue and sell all your private data to a shady entrepreneur in a lawless country. They could sell the photos to Joe Francis and individual account histories to blackmailers and gossips. We know that won't happen today, because Facebook has the resources and the motivation to make sure it doesn't happen, but if the company goes to hell, we won't have those assurances anymore.