For the avoidance of doubt, XenForo does not allow anyone except conversation recipients to view the textual content of those conversations.
I'm certain of that, and never wanted to imply anything remotely like it.
You know, I've been administering forums for over a decade, and I know that in the day-to-day affairs, you do a lot of things that, strictly speaking, would require legal counsel -- but if you really took things seriously, only major companies could even afford fora.
So, you delete users posts and say hello to Freedom of Speech suits that have been filed and won against forum providers, both major (ISP fora) and minor (companies)), but if you don't, hey, you're sued for publishing and/or tolerating the publishing of libelous statements. Endless fun.
Your users have avatars, some of them may violate copyright and you notice and ask them to stop, others, well, you don't notice and a DMCA cease & desist comes knocking... I have received cease & desist letters from photographers because users used *their own portrait* as an avatar, which was in breach of the licence granted by the photographers -- only just about no person would ever think that this may be the case), etc.
All these cases are edge cases, they are rare, but the thing is: they wouldn't have to be rare. The law is actually pretty clear (and completely unfitting for the digital age), and we (forum providers) are just incredibly lucky there aren't that many unreasonable and litigious nutcases out there.
I see no privacy conflict at all. If you don't want a site owner to be able to view your files, don't upload them to that person's site. Very simple really
I hear you, and I generally think the same way, it's the digital native's view of thinking about these things.
I have no issue with facebook privacy, or lack thereof, because I am fully conscious that *everything* I post there is out of my hands, no matter how tightly I control it; ditto the internet as a whole. The problem is: the law (SCA, DPA, what have you) doesn't see it that way. As a forum provider, you instantly become a legal entity which, depending on jurisdiction, is more or less similar to a newspaper publishing company (Germany, Italy and France are probably the most severe cases because even a private blog is held to the same standards, Japan is slightly saner), and held to similar standards if someone sues you -- which, thank goodness, isn't all that often...
As previously stated, I'm not sure myself how it would go if someone sued a forum admin, but wanted to voice this concern just so people could think about it or look into it.