Disclaimer: non FBer here.

Apparently, users value at least some of the things FB does. But I have to wonder: do they value it enough to pay for it? The key issue is 'who is the customer?'. In a no-advertisement model (e.g. Medium) the financial motivation for invading people's privacy becomes a lot smaller (and, in a perfect world, would disappear, as would the need to regulate).

Pity Google killed their 'Wave' project (collaboration tool with O/S servers, and interesting inter-server federation, allowing both users to control what part of their data got to the server - and giving server administrators control over what data left their particular server).

I'm pretty sure the original clients were the inspiration for Slack (If you've used Slack, imagine that, but with lots of servers - including one you have for friends and family - rather than the centralized service Slack currently has)