For the last year or so, I've been trying something new with my social media usage, to mixed results.
My theory is that while I'm interested in the personal lives of the people I follow, for the most part I couldn't care less about things they post with the direct intent of emotionally-manipulating me. So much of those kinds of posts are driven by loneliness, boredom, existential angst, and the comfort that public clanning brings people. While I'm completely committed to supporting and caring for my friends, these posts never bring them the relief they seek. Instead, it always ends up in a more-and more frenetic argument. I am almost beginning to think that for many of them, if they can't find that comfort online, they'll settle for a good fight. And after more than two decades online, I have never seen that comfort successfully delivered, aside from in a performative way.
So every time one of my friends re-posts or shares something I find emotionally manipulative, whether I agree or disagree with the sentiments, I take a look at the original source. Is this a source with, say, more than 10K followers? If so, my friend's participation in this communication stream is much more like a little propagandist than somebody who is either seeking or offering comfort. So I block the original source; after all, it'll just keep appearing again and again in my freed until one day it causes an argument.
This, for the most part, leaves honest-to-goodness things my friends are actually experiencing in person, instead of vicariously. As long as that's the case, I try to allow wide latitude, after all, I want to learn and share from as many people as possible with differing views. If, however, I notice a pattern of pain, either pain they're experiencing that I can't help with or pain they're seeking to inflict in others in order to fight with them, I start the snoozing and nofollowing.
I wish I could say that this strategy has been highly successful. It has certainly made social media much less painful, but over time I'm finding that I'm pretty much zapping everybody. Very few people have the editorial discipline to actually be responsible worldwide publishers. Most of us will far too easily choose attention over quality conversations. Social media isn't helping us; it's hacking us.
I wish my friends on the right the best of luck. I think it's a good move. Anything to advance the destruction of this cognitive and epistemology monopoly is a win in my book. I look forward to seeing how it goes for them.