As a private company they can kick one off the service anyway, ToS (which they can easily modify on the fly) or not. I (probably mis-)read your post to mean there was a clear legal problem with trying to modify the view to suit user tastes ("user content stays, ads go").

Folks doing this are fighting an uphill battle against stronger opponents who have powerful weapons (e.g., disable access), but it is not a hopeless battle -- there are examples of successful and profitable products built for filtering out force-fed content.

> Their terms of service also give them the right to kick you off the service - as they please.

Actually, they don’t, as rulings in Germany have shown, Facebook does NOT have the right to close accounts "at will" or for ToS violations. Especially not if the relevant ToS paragraph does not conform to law.

(Just like you can’t refuse to serve customers for their religion in the US, for example)

ToS don't associate directly with laws. They are terms of service, not legal requirements.

If you go into a restaurant and put your finger in a fellow customer's food, that is not against the law, but the manager will throw you out. It's the same with Facebook's ToS, they can decide who and who cannot use their service. I have read a lot about how Germany has dealt with privacy within the Facebook platform, but have not seen anything about reinstating users who have breached ToS?

> but have not seen anything about reinstating users who have breached ToS?

There were a few cases regarding the realname policy regarding that, and it’s still in the courts, but it looks like Facebook can’t exclude users for that.