It's very true, but this is a known and heavily researched problem. We have solutions to it, compromised solutions perhaps, but solutions none the less.

The current state of social networks vs email is night and day. I would never host my own email (despite self-hosting almost all my other online services) because the anti-spam techniques in wide usage are so punitive if you get your config wrong (your IP and domain basically get permanently sin-binned), but I use gandi.net as my email provider, I'm able to choose to pay them money and in exchange get my mail handled by someone I trust.

I'd gladly pay to use facebook, but run by someone I trust. However, social services are centralized to such an extreme even vs email that I actually cannot pay to have secure and respectful social networking, as facebook has successfully locked everyone else out of the game.

I digress. Email is not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than social.