I indirectly have control over what the government does with the data (as a citizen). If enough citizens don't like what they're doing, it can be stopped. Also, they have no incentive to make money by harming people.

On the other hand, I'm not a board member or shareholder of Facebook, and they have a legal obligation to make money.

As such, I would absolutely use a US Government social media service over Facebook. (Bonus if it were federated with other countries.)

(In reality I'd use neither because Facebook is boring anyway.)

Oh, and there's a good chance the NSA would want to encrypt communications too.

Their job should be to protect data, not collect it.

Being cynical, the goverment has it anyway. Why not avoid the middleman?

Too easy to access, there is a world of difference between the police taking a warrant to Facebook and some jobsworth in the local council browsing through data to look for potential victims to harass.

It might already be possible for facebook employees to access your information anyway, and if it isn't then a similar system could be set up in a govt run agency. There are many advantages to having a democratic administration run such a system rather than a profit-driven one --- businesses will always, rightly, put profit before privacy. If we decide that privacy is more important then we either have to regulate better, nationalise, or choose not to use the service. The third option doesn't seem to be getting widespread uptake; where young people are moving away from facebook it is not primarily because of privacy concerns.

As a junior Facebook employee, it is extremely difficult to get real user data. It's possible, but there's a purposefully large amount of bureaucracy required to get it. For me, it's usually not working doing and I end up generating my own data anyways.

So you trust the govt to do right by you. What about the next govt? What if UKIP got in power?

Honestly I think this information is actually too dangerous for anyone to have - companies or govts. I'd like to see this kind of level of information gathering made illegal.

I don't 'trust' them blindly, but if information gathering is necessary for such a service to exist, then I think it's better if the service is provided by a democratic agency than a private company. Nobody is forced to use it.

No need for a warrant to access online data. FB is happy that give them full access for a modest fee.

middle man increases uncertainty, which is your friend

Honestly, in a perfect world it might make sense. The fact that often there is more trust in private, profit-driven corporations over governments which are meant to represent the public and their interests is definitely something that needs to be considered.