[kimdcmason]

I never liked the reciprocal friend model of Facebook, and I liked even less that it was exposed publicly by default, allowing anyone to crawl the social graph. Even if you lock down your friend list, it doesn't matter because your friends mostly aren't locking down theirs.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal clearly demonstrates why this is a dangerous thing. The clear solution is to unfriend everybody then delete (not suspend, but delete) your account.

Enough people do this, and Facebook's cherished network effect will be weakened enough for better alternatives to begin appearing. Alternatives that don't vomit large amounts of data about you into the public sphere by default.

[leadingthenet]

And what exactly is the business model for that going to be? Unless people switch to decentralised services (they won't) or pay for a centralised one (they won't), what way could any alternatives survive?

The problem isn't Facebook as much as it is the system in which it exists.