The alternative is a federated model where you can one of many platform providers (or set up your own) and they can all "talk" to each other to create a "space"

The alternative is a federated model where you can one of many platform providers (or set up your own) and they can all "talk" to each other to create a "space" which is owned by no single entity. An open standard, defined by many participants, creates the "space." This is the way email works. It's the way XMPP works for messaging (and which has been stabbed in the back by Google by dropping their support of it in crucial ways). The Diaspora Project has the same concept for social networking in a Facebook-ish way. I didn't RTFA but use of Tor can impair Facebook's tracking of people, thus making the data about people less valuable commodities to sell to their advertisers. Using Tor may also increase Facebook's network usage a bit by making less use of cached data, locally and remotely.