Until people start being willing to pay for services like Facebook or Twitter these kind of antics are inevitable.
Unless you're paying you're the product.
Unless you're paying you're the product.
It's a nice soundbite, but it's oversimplified. There are many business models, and some don't involve neither direct payments nor ads/tracking, and others have ads even when you pay (e.g. Cable TV). It's just not that simple.
Advertising (users as products) and charging are just two characteristics that may appear in a business model together, or just one of them, or none, depending on its design. There's simply no rule that makes ¬paying ⇒ product an inevitability.