Earlier quoted context omitted.
Social media being bad is partly because of shady business practices, and partly because a lot of people suck (in different ways, at different times, including us). Having said that all of that, have you tried mastodon?
A large part of the problem, imo, is that people haven't used the ability to talk to the entire planet as an opportunity to broaden their horizons, but to build themselves a transnational bubble of like-minded individuals. Once upon a time, shouting "WTF are they thinking?" into the void was kinda understandable, but these days you can literally just ask them by changing a URL. Don't even have to go to a dodgy pub in…
A brutal reality to navigate if you're not acting in bad faith.