The feeling that law is useless is good for Big Social because it helps uphold the status quo.
In practice, companies don’t like doing things that are obviously illegal, especially criminal.
For example, do phone operators sell your phone records? No, because the penalty is 10 years in prison. One employee with good ethics or bad mood is enough to land top management in jail.
Does “records” mean actual contents of the call? No, it means simply “whom you called and when”.
Does social media contain much more sensitive personal information than phone records? Absolutely.
If the law does not penalize selling that information, it only means the law is inadequate, not that it is useless.
> I don't think they would just say "oh, well" and actually do the hard work it would take to make all their users paying customers.
If they won’t, someone else will. It can even be you or me. This is the beauty of free market where honest competition is possible.