Here's the problem I see with this though.. One of the main values any social network provides is exploiting your network activity and social graph, and so it must be allowed into your personal/private sphere (at least to some degree).

And I use the word "exploiting" in a neutral sense here, because it can be good, in the sense of using all this data for your benefit to give you relevant and timely updates about your friends and surroundings, and let you know about things that interest you (i.e. why most people use Facebook today).

But, by its nature, that same data can also be used against you, exploited by marketers, advertisers, governments, etc..

So how do you get one without risking the other? How do you allow a social network to capture and analyze all this personal data about you - in order to return a valuable service - but then be totally (or reasonably) sure that your data will be protected and also not used against you?

Someone else mentioned HIPAA and other data protection laws that exist for medical data. I know regulation isn't a trendy topic in tech, but maybe there does need to be some clear codified rules about what companies can do with our personal/social data and what the consequences are for misuse or neglect.