> Permanently losing access to an account sucks a lot.
But mostly that's all. Usually it's a minor inconvenience. Occasionally it sucks a bit. Rarely it sucks a lot. Almost never is anything of value lost. It can be wholly eliminated by good data practices e.g. backups. (No one backs up their Amazon account data. It isn't designed for it. Because the "webdevs" think of the data as their boss's - squarequoting "webdev" because the effective decision is the CEO's and the "webdev" is just taking some abstract, ill-thought-through decision and making the ramifications concrete.)
On the other hand, it also sucks a lot when your gratuitously collected private information is taken to the darkweb. As countries become more accustomed to dealing with databreaches, they are beginning to consider legislating harsh compensation requirements and painful fines. Once that's happened, almost all of the private data that the user has in their account? Let the user keep it. We webdevs and our mortal enemies in business/sales/product will have to innovate new decentralised databases - where each node is a users' computer. And yeah, some things will be harder or not even possible (for the user). Other things will become possible that aren't at the moment (for the user). And at least you won't go bankrupt when a state level actor decides your database is valuable.
But mostly that's all. Usually it's a minor inconvenience. Occasionally it sucks a bit. Rarely it sucks a lot. Almost never is anything of value lost. It can be wholly eliminated by good data practices e.g. backups. (No one backs up their Amazon account data. It isn't designed for it. Because the "webdevs" think of the data as their boss's - squarequoting "webdev" because the effective decision is the CEO's and the "webdev" is just taking some abstract, ill-thought-through decision and making the ramifications concrete.)
On the other hand, it also sucks a lot when your gratuitously collected private information is taken to the darkweb. As countries become more accustomed to dealing with databreaches, they are beginning to consider legislating harsh compensation requirements and painful fines. Once that's happened, almost all of the private data that the user has in their account? Let the user keep it. We webdevs and our mortal enemies in business/sales/product will have to innovate new decentralised databases - where each node is a users' computer. And yeah, some things will be harder or not even possible (for the user). Other things will become possible that aren't at the moment (for the user). And at least you won't go bankrupt when a state level actor decides your database is valuable.