If I share a picture of my kids, Facebook makes sure all of my relatives will see it. If I share a political post, it will only be seen by my friends that agree with me.
Ad targeting was also much less sophisticated back then (did Facebook even have ads yet at that point?).
I definitely remember reading some pretty-accurate-in-hindsight scare pieces about Facebook's only way to monetize around the time they IPO'd.
That said, it's almost impossible to separate signal from noise with the earliest folks to cry wolf, and it doesn't help that some of them (looking at you, Peter Schiff) love to trot out their sky-was-falling predictions after the fact as proof of their clairvoyance.
While they all nailed it with Facebook, I don't remember a single piece about Google's similarities as they were rolling out Gmail/GChat/GDocs/GDrive for "free".
This applies to broadcast media as much as it does to social media. TV and Radio can be used to educate, or for thought-provoking news & commentary, or high art, or for pandering entertainment, advertising, or even propaganda.
I think social media was in a different place 10 years ago, essentially in its inception and somewhat less directed but essentially driven by the values of its early adopters and best ostensibly vision of its creators and boosters. I also see the values Obama was campaigning with as better than a lot of the values behind some social media now, but that's my own value judgment.
And as other interests came to understand it as medium that could amplify their message, and came into understanding of specific dynamics, and social media as an enterprise has therefore become legible to and influenceable by business and political interests, it's definitely suffered.
Facebook was still 4 years from IPOing in 2008, so it was definitely a different time. The vast capital Zuckerberg personally has at his disposal thanks to owning the majority of voting shares is unprecedented. Zuckerberg can have Facebook easily buy any up and coming social networks at prices the startups can't refuse (eg Instagram). This behavior is good for Zuckerberg, good for Facebook, good for venture capitalists, and even good for the securities markets at large. This behavior is not good for consumers or competition which is exactly the point of antitrust actions.
After about two hours of using FB in 2007 I had this crazy feeling that someone having access to all those people's photos and activities won't necessary end well; left and never looked back.
This isn't true. He might have claimed it I suppose, but that's not true.
To the extent they did anything unique on social media, it was in using their own social media network, MyBO (which was originally developed by Blue State Digital in partnership with the DNC, but the Obama campaign had their own version that Chris also played a role in tweaking for the campaign).
That said, Facebook organizing in 2008 looked nothing like what it looks like today. It looked far more like what we were doing in the MySpace days as far as political organizing online (MySpace got about the same amount of traffic back then). I personally think their work with MyBO is more noteworthy and distinguished from what other campaigns were doing, even if it wasn't built by them.
The question you need to ask yourself is "what kind of society do I want to live in" then you can answer what you want to be possible and not.