I really want to be able to see my close friends' Instagram posts and read interesting tweets from ~50 people I've chosen to follow in my field. There are no technical blockers to letting me do these; they aren't even much technical work. It would be a material life improvements for me (and I believe for everyone). But I'm not allowed to use the subsets of consumer tech which would enrich my life without exposing myself to the Reels button, the For You feed, and an avalanche of black magic attention hacking. I am bad at moderating my use and I have a low tolerance for doomscrolling, so I don't let myself use these products. As a result I'm cut off from the genuinely life improving subsets of social media which could be so easily made available.
We just accept that _of course_ you have to be willing to get your frontal lobe mined if you want to see what your friends have been doing. _Of course_ you have to be willing to scroll an infinite feed of AI-generated slop if you want to read opinions from people you respect.
I'm perfectly happy to see ads, I'm happy to pay money, I'm happy to come to any fair economic arrangement; but I value my attention highly and I can't pay the attentional price demanded of me, so I don't get to use these products.
People on this site might say "just don't use Reels / For You Feed" and maybe they're right. But for me and the vast majority of people that's not an option, it's my individual willpower pitted against an army of designers, PMs and data scientists every hour of the day.
I am happier without social media than I was with it; but I would be much happier still with the genuinely enriching subset of social media which is there for the offering. As social media becomes a bigger and bigger part of modern life it feels more like essential infrastructure which we _should_ be able to access in ways which work for us. The Fediverse is a great step though I haven't gone as far as to built a custom frontend which works for me (I think it's a big untapped market).
Youtube is the clear winner here. They let you turn personalization off - at which point the Recommended tab disappears, Youtube Shorts don't work, and I can still see new videos from people I subscribe to and follow links to videos when I need to watch them. It's a fantastic compromise and I live in fear of some PM (maybe reading this thread) inevitably realizing they could squeeze a few more minutes of sweet attention juice out of me by taking it away.