Something like this would be the right way to do social media and networks, and it would never be allowed to work. Ideally, I would own my data and I could jus

Something like this would be the right way to do social media and networks, and it would never be allowed to work. Ideally, I would own my data and I could just bid the social media providers I want to host my data. I could pick one, or several, and I could pick free providers with ads or pay for a premium provider with no ads and other benefits. I could also host the data myself, and messages, posts, friend requests, and updates would travel from service to service via standard protocols. Each user would have a cryptographical identity that would be unalterable across different services; of course you could create many of them, such as one for your work-self, one for your personal self, and one for your hobby/forum discussion/spare time self. This would reduce social media companies into mere infrastructure carriers. Even telcos talked themselves out of it, I can't imagine social media companies to want anything except own us.