This is what I thought too but as others have pointed out elsewhere in this thread how would they provide additional services on top like search and I don't kno

This is what I thought too but as others have pointed out elsewhere in this thread how would they provide additional services on top like search and I don't know what. Come to think of it though, if the service is free (i.o.w. you are the data and advertisers are the actual customers wouldn't Google/Facebook or whoever be more concerned with the security and privacy of those paying the bills rather than the data-points generating harvestable content. So it really does seem that we need to move ultimately to federated, paid-for services for communication at least, like POTS but for email and chat and whatever.