It should not be possible to use activation controls on pages app if there is no active subscribers. At worst misconfiguring instance to be public and author at the same time will result pages being deleted altogether. At least deleting pages should be prevented.

From chat:
Federico Grilli
Jan-31 4:17 PM
I'm giving myself the answer - un/publishing actions should not be available on a public instance
at least they are not in the 4 series
Jan Haderka
Jan-31 4:26 PM
sry, wasn't here. yes, you should not be able to activate on public ... actually in 4.4 it works such that those actions are available only if there is at least one active subscriber in the system ... same goes for status column - no active subscribers, no status shown