Well facebook is notorious for data prying already
So this is not something out of the blue the bigger question is how to connect with other people over social media when everyone and their grandma is still on facebook, without a good alternative
Facebook doesn't have access to any information you don't give it. It's perfectly avoidable. I think all social media companies, that are free to use, are going to deal in information as an asset. They're businesses, and if you're not paying them, they have to sell something to someone else to operate. That happens to be your information to advertisers in most cases. Any alternative to the free model will require people to pay for the service in exchange for not selling or tracking your data while you use it. I think people will prefer the free model, which is why there is no pay-to-use alternative that will approach Facebook's ubiquity. People just need to know that it still comes at a cost.
The question is can you develop a digital property that solves the problem of privacy and information storage for personal user accounts in a way that can be used like money, in other terms developing a solution to this problem could exist in cryptography outside of a centralized network such a as facebook as we know it today.
There is enough computer power to utilize the digital space in a way that one can contribute to a network for social purposes but its only in the last few years that we have began harnessing networks of computers which we use for mining at present.
In this way it is fair to say that someday in the future it will be possible to build it possibly an ethereum protocol app that connects and maintains social accounts using ether as a credit.
Social capstones, like mathematical ones that combine different elements such as bitcoin may be the next step into an ecosystem, in that way it is possible to build another step into a decentralized social network while keeping scarcity in a social network using information.
As you said though for now we must digress while avoiding a Facebook account is certainly doable, maintaining the social relations while retaining all your privacy privileges remains a challenge, for now at least social media companies will have free reign on this information until viable alternative systems can develop to gain sufficient traction to branch out from a central ecosystem.
