By "enlightened" what do you mean exactly? I think everyone is at least passively aware that Facebook probably knows a lot about them and is growing more powerful. Perhaps they can't read the contents of a browser cookie to discern that logging out doesn't actually mean logging out, nor can they really understand the website as a huge mass of code and databases that someone is making billions on, but they know what they're putting in and getting out. For most people that's enough.
I really think people of my age (19, but I would venture to say teenagers and people in their 20's) are too young to care about this sort of thing, they're living the most open time of their lives anyway. We have grown up with the internet, and we're pretty much used to it. Not to take a guess at your age, but I have a feeling most HN posters/techbubble bloggers are older and have seen a lot more happen in terms of the internet evolving. I imagine if I had watched the internet materialize from the beginning this would be alarming, but I was practically born into it if you take into account the fact that I haven't been using the internet for more than about 9 years. And while I do understand what Facebook is doing probably a little better than most of my peers, I still can't really let myself care. I personally never felt I give them much of anything significant. My existence online isn't that important to me right now. And free music is pretty great.
I use "enlightened" tongue-in-cheek to me the people on HN that think and know about these things.
You're right, I'm older than you. I was on Friendster in college and then Myspace. Graduated as Facebook was coming up so I never got the college experience of it. (God I feel old now, thanks a lot, 19 year-old!) I think at your age perhaps I didn't care either, but now I do. I think trivial status updates can mean more than we think and they at least can place where you were at a certain time. It's a lot of information that could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
EDIT: I'm not trying to say that "you'll change when you grow older," rather that's just what happened to me.
Fair enough. I just don't see why any of this could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Sure they're very knowledgeable about certain aspects of our lives, but it's mostly trivial. What are they going to do with it, steal identities?
I really think people of my age (19, but I would venture to say teenagers and people in their 20's) are too young to care about this sort of thing, they're living the most open time of their lives anyway. We have grown up with the internet, and we're pretty much used to it. Not to take a guess at your age, but I have a feeling most HN posters/techbubble bloggers are older and have seen a lot more happen in terms of the internet evolving. I imagine if I had watched the internet materialize from the beginning this would be alarming, but I was practically born into it if you take into account the fact that I haven't been using the internet for more than about 9 years. And while I do understand what Facebook is doing probably a little better than most of my peers, I still can't really let myself care. I personally never felt I give them much of anything significant. My existence online isn't that important to me right now. And free music is pretty great.