FB is valuable for me too but that doesn't mean I trust it. As you say, it's a business that exists to turn a profit and I am cattle. I don't like this arrangement but I don't really have an alternative (as you say).
However, that does not mean that people shouldn't draw attention to what FB is, what it captures and what it does in your name. Nobody reads the "instructions and warning labels" and even if they did, they're not going to comprehend them. Would you then admonish the user to RTFM? I'd call that victim-blaming. How many developers would dare blame the user for not understanding how to use their shiny new web-app? Why take the same approach to those who can't understand a ToS?
FB may be a tool but that's also an oversimplification. It's not anything like a 'hammer', or even a chainsaw. I'd consider it more like a drug (eg morphine), which is also a tool but is not really your friend. Those kinds of tools get regulated.
"but I don't really have an alternative (as you say)."
Which is another way to say that you in fact do have an alternative. People in oppressive regimes tell themselves the same, which is how they do get perpetuated. The change happens when people accept the fact that there is an alternative.
I don't think I would compare this to living under an oppressive regime. There are plenty of people in oppressed countries who speak out, and yet the regimes are perpetuated. Sometimes the readily available alternative is just another flavor of repressive regime. It's easy for people in relatively free societies to say, "they should just stand up for themselves", yet have no concept of what that would actually entail.
I didn't say "they should just stand up for themselves", and I didn't say that the alternative was "readily available", I just said that change comes from people accepting the fact that there is an alternative, and that considering the status quo as being without alternative perpetuates the status quo.
Also: No, an oppressive regime with plenty of people speaking out is not perpetuated. One in a million speaking out is not plenty, and half the people in a country speaking out won't leave the government much choice. That's why oppressive regimes suppress free speech. You cannot control a majority of a country by force.
Just because an individual's action may not amount to much, doesn't mean that there is any other way out than individuals' actions. The oppressor won't just give up, and the other side consists of nothing but individuals, whose inaction certainly won't change anything.
There is no contradiction between those two terms. Nation states are social networks, too, and some of them are oppressive regimes. One risk factor for becoming oppressive is a concentration of power. Facebook concentrates a lot of power. The concentration of power is why people feel that they have no alternative.
Note: Analogies are analogies because they are analogous, not because they are an exact copy.
However, that does not mean that people shouldn't draw attention to what FB is, what it captures and what it does in your name. Nobody reads the "instructions and warning labels" and even if they did, they're not going to comprehend them. Would you then admonish the user to RTFM? I'd call that victim-blaming. How many developers would dare blame the user for not understanding how to use their shiny new web-app? Why take the same approach to those who can't understand a ToS?
FB may be a tool but that's also an oversimplification. It's not anything like a 'hammer', or even a chainsaw. I'd consider it more like a drug (eg morphine), which is also a tool but is not really your friend. Those kinds of tools get regulated.