If people would have just taken the time to learn how subscribers and subscriptions work, they'd realise that this is easily one of the best changes Facebook has made since allowing you to block apps entirely.
I haven't been able to see any posts from my mom for the past year on account of there being nothing but zynga crap all over her wall, but now I can head there and actually see what she's saying for a change.
Similarly, people can now subscribe to specific news from friends, such as new photo uploads (which is great for those using their Facebook page as an auxiliary output for photography or other visual art oriented 'works'), for group news without getting spammed every time someone posts a comment on a group's wall, things like that.
And it's not like you can't prevent people from getting certain updates from you automatically.
ALL the other complaints are about privacy, yet people don't realise that it's always been that people could go onto your profile to stalk you as they pleased; at least until the first waves of privacy settings got onto Facebook.
tl;dr people are complaining without understanding what they're complaining about, and they should be happy about what they're complaining about, they're just too stupid/short-sighted to understand why