You are totally missing the point. You think the change significantly improves your product, but your users perceive the change as a massive breach of trust. Why? Because the underlying JTBD (job-to-be-done) for a lot of engineers is discreet job searching. IOW, for a lot of people, a public TB profile would be like having a private Ashley Madison profile [0] exposed to the public. Ashley Madison was a major source of embarrassment for many when they suffered a breach.
Rather than double-down, might be time to step back a bit. The aphorism "the market's perception is your reality" is especially instructive.
[0] The Ashley Madison metaphor used by this commenter is especially apt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280782