Very well said. This is the approach we're taking with peergos, paid accounts unless you self host. I wrote some of our thoughts on this here:
2. My approach is not “one more product will be the answer”, more like “fixing the incentives and making the market work will enable many products”.
2. How do you fix the incentives short of fixing capitalism to remove software VCs?
2. You don’t need to get rid of VCs, it’s orthogonal.
Just make interoperation/complete API coverage required by law to be available to any user if you have more users than certain amount. It would neuter the lock-in when anyone can make a third-party GUI that has no ads and interoperates with any other social platform (meaning no “all my friends are there” effect).