And I agree Facebook is not the first company in the world to maximise attention with this kind of content. Go back to when political pamphlets started appearing in the 16th century, it was mostly salacious bullshit about well-known public figures being possessed by the devil or drinking the blood of orphans.
I am not even sure what the problem is anymore, let alone what the solution is...but this is not going to stop with Facebook, this is just a reflection of human nature (and yes, everyone has complained about this kind of "content", it ignores the fact that most humans enjoy consuming it).
(I think the most problematic part of Facebook is just that so many people get their news from there and, like every human that has ever existed, they have been unable to deal with that responsibility in an even-handed way...I don't know though. They are basically a dead platform anyway, it is mainly used by old people to keep up to-date with their grandchildren afaik...I don't really know anyone who uses it, and I have never used it myself).
This is terribly myopic; you don't have to like FB or want to use it to recognize its influence. Consider the possibility that you just haven't really wrapped your head around it yet. Also, I'm gonna guess you don't know a whole lot of older people, and may be falling into the cognitive trap of thinking your experience of social demographics is reflective of the population at large.
You're guess is incorrect (I love that you have considered all the things I don't know whilst jumping to random conclusions). When I said: I don't really know anyone who uses it, I meant I don't know anyone under the age of 35 who uses the platform with regularity (remember, I said that it was dead, not that no-one used it...they have 3bn MAU, people use it but my point is that people don't use FB in the way that is often assumed by politicians...who btw, mainly see FB as a way to target voters...the political use of FB peaked with Obama).