Facebook should be prohibited from looking into the data that I send to friends. Rationale: telephone companies are not allowed to listen in on my conversations, so why should facebook be allowed to do essentially the same? IMHO, facebook and other social networks (with say >100k users) should be regulated much like telecom companies, and I am surprised that they aren't yet.
Also note that telecom companies are required to interoperate with other telecom companies.
It's interesting how charging money changes the perception of different practices. Like with your hypothetical PRO membership, when taking into account the data that FB collects on people without their input, by studying their network relations, sounds to me like a massive extortion scheme: 'If you give us a monthly fee, we won't disseminate this potentially embarrassing/damaging information about you that we got without your knowledge or consent'. But instead of doing that, they're just disseminating the information, and not even bothering to give you the option to pay to keep it private, since they know that others will pay more for it than the average user will.
The free option is certainly more damaging in some situations, yet the paid option is the one that feels criminal.
It's highly unlikely FB would want to so directly call out the value they get from controlling your privacy.
Additionally, the value of mined data decreases when you start taking members out. Given the massive number of FB users.
They're generating an avg of almost $1/mo/user, but that's probably heavily skewed towards users that have more money to spend. And while I'd personally spend a few bucks a month for such a service, it's seems unlikely that there'd be enough adoption to make a difference in how FB goes about privacy.
Also note that telecom companies are required to interoperate with other telecom companies.