One of the problems with creating an alternative to facebook, without ads and tracking, is that even if you do manage to get the market to move then it creates a huge incentive to introduce ads and tracking, just as facebook did after it gained the market from myspace.

What if there was a peer-to-peer social network instead? Public messages are submitted to it signed with my private key, restricted messages and events are signed with the private keys of the receivers too. Websites which access this stuff for you would be for ease of use, reflecting whats on the network rather than controlling it directly, so any website which imposes too high a cost (such as ads or snoping) will be outed by competition. Competition in websites and clients would also drive innovations in usability, and towards whoever is willing to host data for the minimum cost.

You might guess from my vague wording that I do not have any technical expertise and I have not thought about it much further, that's why I'm asking you guys.