Regardless of what the actual situation is, if these posts are being brought to people's attention by friends because they seem sensitive and are now more prominent than they once were, isn't that a concern in and of itself?

Good point. Mass hysteria being used as a carrier for sudden bursts of clarity would be an interesting phenomenon in itself. Thousands of people suddenly realizing "Oh god, what have I been doing?"

Edit: The more I read about this, the more it seems to me that this is what is going on. I think this has interesting implications for the "Privacy is dead" attitude. It suggests to me that, contrary to popular belief in some circles, people are not ok with their diminished privacy.. they just haven't been thinking about it.

I wouldn't put this on the users' lack of clarity as much as I would blame Facebook for changing the course of it's features so much so that this is now happening to people. People were using the site as it was once intended and we can't blame them for being infuriated when the logic behind that usage changes. To me it's no different than Quora deciding to make all of your posts public without the chance to opt-in, except because of Facebook's privacy settings mess, it isn't easily reversible without severely crippling the content you've posted over the entirety of your account's lifespan.

Fair point. In either event I think it is fair to say that this demonstrates that privacy is valuable to consumers, despite what certain people might have us believe.