Brands building their online presence via Facebook are mad as far as I'm concerned, Facebook owns that content, they can do with it what they want and as this demonstrates, zero recourse.
Just because the currency in question is not (directly) the USD doesn't mean I'm not paying for it.
You get to complain about AT&T and your roofer because you have a contract with them entitling you to a certain level of service in exchange for your money. Your only agreement with Facebook is Facebook's AUP / ToS / privacy policy, which gives you no such rights. If you don't think it's an equitable agreement, don't accept it!
Sure you are giving them personal information that is valuable, but I don't think the datacenter power company is going to take that as a monthly payment from Facebook each month the bill is due.
You do have the right to complain, as everyone does, but since you aren't giving them actual $, they have the right to really not give a damn.
Sure, it's not quite the same as a financial exchange, but at the very least they should treat their users well -- their virtual monopoly isn't gonna last forever.
And it's not clear they realistically could be staffed to handle it well. Though Amazon seems to do a better job than the others. So arguably you can provide better service if you're willing to invest in it. But for Facebook and Google, beyond some VERY base level, better customer service is a cost that probably wouldn't drive much in the way of revenue.
The trouble is, Facebook don't have any viable competition any more. If someone leaves Facebook in disgust then the consequence is that they no longer use a social network. If a respected site like Ars Technica don't like Facebook's policies then, as you say, they have zero recourse.
Given the above, what would you advise Ars Technica to do, other than complain loudly and hope that Facebook smile favourably on them?
Because, as ars points out, the system is ripe for abuse. I could make an auto complaining bot that aims to take down every page with a copyright complaint. Eventually facebook would be a waste land with large groups of alienated folks bad mouthing facebook and seeking an alternative.
Ultimately, facebook needs to resolve this issue, even if they need to charge a fee.
Comcast Internet Video Package (YouTube and Hulu): $79.99/mo.
Comcast Social Media add-on (Facebook, Xfinity Friends, NYTimes): $14.99/mo.
Point being, a large number of paid providers becomes inconvenient if not impossible for an individual to maintain. This creates a market for a gateway provider to aggregate payments and subscriptions, which role the big media companies have traditionally fulfilled. While it's true that dependence on Facebook leaves you with little recourse if things go wrong, individual payments for social media services seems untenable. There must be some better way of addressing the issue, as you cannot necessarily afford to ignore Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Unfortunately, as long as facebook keeps growing without going public, their staff is kept busy with other things, like calculating their stock's valuations.