let's say your friends are using WhatsApp, or Skype, via proprietary protocol, but you only use open sourced IM, then you are isolated from them.
Fortunately the evidence against just those actors - Facebook, Google and others - is getting more and more visible and palpable to all. Between Facebook's blatant censorship of content and Youtube 'demonitising' [1] 'controversial' videos and actors, it is getting hard to avoid noticing that they are flexing their opinion-influencing muscles. This should make it a bit easier to convince people to jump ship [2] but you won't get all of those people to forego on the delights of Spies'r'Us or CatVideoCentral. Still, once a few of them join you you'll no longer be out of the loop and that is what matters here.
[1] a good word in this context as it almost reads as 'demonising'
[1] ...and please tell them that moving from Facebook to VKontakte is not an effective move in this respect
If some pass laws that make my choice to go outside FBook, Google or whatever-Internet-monster, then I'm screwed.
That my current nightmare. But I have not the faintest idea if this is close to reality or not. EFF zealots would probably very close while the very existence of ubiquitous free software says the opposite. Dunno...
But as long as we still can do the things we want, I do not see it as a problem ... but well, yes, since we have to struggle hard to just controll our devices a bit, because the rest does not care and so they can allmost implement whatever spware they want - it is a problem .