@Phil, as usual you are totally on point.
You said, “You, your family, your friends, and all of your habits are transformed into something that has monetary value”, which is a good point. I want to expand on that.
Let’s keep in mind what, exactly, is being digitized. It is not you that Facebook holds in its servers, it is your activity - a rough outline of who you are. If we keep this in mind, suddenly we realize that Facebook loses its power over us. Nothing in the real world has actually been digitized at all. It only has power if we believe that the profile is equivalent to our selves.
The foundation of Facebook’s success is people’s common belief - whether conscious or not - that their Facebook profile is effectively an extension of themselves. This belief drives us to make our profile conform to our internal representations of ourselves - how we believe ourselves to truly be, and how we want others to see us. If you go look at someone’s Facebook profile, you do not see a snapshot of her as a person. You see a highly curated version of how she sees her inner life, of how she would like others to see her. In Facebook, people see a (false) opportunity to invent a better version of themselves, and to make that an extension of their real identity.
By identifying so powerfully with an online profile, filling up the shell with a crude outline of our fantasy-self, we give up our innermost desires to Facebook. Advertisers love desire - it helps them sell things. That’s how digital information has becomes a commodity in the world today. Never forget that Facebook marketed its advertising services by claiming to be able to identify depressed teens who would be vulnerable to specific types of product ads. Never forget that Facebook shows you more advertisements shortly after you change your profile picture, because they know you are in a vulnerable state, hunting for “likes” to validate yourself. Vulnerable, insecure people buy things more. Facebook is designed to put you in that state, then show you products that will supposedly fill the empty void they just created.
This is the grand deception that Facebook has pulled on us all, and this is what drives their revenue model of advertising. Advertisers will prostrate themselves in front of Zuckerberg for eternity as long as he tricks his users into sharing their personal vulnerabilities with the network.
Find a way to show people that their profile is not their self, and Facebook will be in trouble. I don’t know if it’s an aggressive anti-smoking style marketing campaign, a film screening, a community workshop, or what. But that’s the basic answer that will loosen Facebook’s grip on our society.