First - usage of Facebook is not mandatory by any stretch of the imagination. However, this guy is seriously off his rocker...
Facebook (to me anyway) has always been about "friends". Right? That's why friends are labeled as "Friends".
So when he cries about "I'd like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot." I have little sympathy. If you want to social network with professionals there is always Linked in. Further he is not correct about this - you can do this by specifically excluding people from viewing your profile, it is under Account -> Privacy Settings -> Friends, Tags and Connections
Further when Ryan says something like "I'd like to support an anti-abortion group without my mother or the world knowing. Cannot." I think, well that's pretty lame. This is like hanging out with the Popular kids in public but secretly attending nerd club and asking all of the Nerds not to tell anyone you went. I personally have no desire to censor every aspect of my "life" on Facebook. Do you *really* want a screen to manage every SINGLE group you belong to and who can see it?
Ryan goes on to say "Setting up a decent system for controlling your privacy on a web service shouldn't be hard.". I'd disagree. It's tremendously difficult. Creating interfaces and a data model for managing these settings is very difficult. Implementing it is a pain as well. From a coder perspective, I find this kind of work the least rewarding around. And Ryan actually admits to this saying "the whole system is maddeningly complex.". I rather think Facebook did a decent job with the current set of options.
Ultimately, if you are not comfortable with the information that Facebook is sharing, then don't share it. Of course you could go and build your own site that has the greatest privacy controls world has ever seen. But that would be awfully difficult wouldn't it?