Remember the old social media, Friendster? There have been lots of files as well there and family photos and videos that can no longer recover and it's the same to this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster
In June 2011, Friendster shifted from social networking site to a social entertainment site with a focus on gaming and entertainment. Previous users' accounts are unchanged. However, all the photos, messages, comments, testimonials, shoutouts, blogs, forums and groups that the users may have had in the past may no longer be part of their Friendster account.[43] An exporting tool is provided to back up the information of the user account. This tool has the ability to export photos to Flickr and Multiply.
The deadline given to users to export their photos was extended to June 27, 2011. Photos which were not exported before the deadline were removed and are no longer retrievable.
not sure how long the deadline given was. but it sounds like it might have been a short one I'm assuming that's what you were referring to by people losing their data. They didn't act fast enough so it was gone, deleted.