Thanks:) I really feel like this is the core issue here. People complain a lot about Facebook, but what would happen if by some heroic, Odyssey-worthy effort they actually get people to switch to some other social network?

. . .

The exact same thing. The exact same thing would happen, because the new social network would have _exactly the same incentives_ as facebook.

I have some more thoughts on this here: http://housejeffries.com/page/3 Not sure how clear my writing is, but the "Inspiration" section at the end has some links to great projects trying to fix this problem.