They make money on ads. Nothing else.

I use adblockers, and since ads are the cause of basically ALL the poisons of the internet, that would fix it overnight if everyone used one.

Please read "Surveillance Capitalism"

Very short explanation: Advertising made Quantity trounce quality. All the toxic behavior of major internet sites ("hate makes clicks" and so on.) is due to the need for quantity.

And why server farms the size of Delaware?

Because of ad surveillance profiling of users. Craigslist used to run on a dinky computer in Craig's closet. Without ad surveillance, vastly less computer power is needed.

THAT said, I use ZERO (anti)social media, but I use DU as a link aggregator for general news and Hacker News as a link aggregator for tech news. I read only what I *want* to see.

I try not to bitch without proposing a cure, and this is real simple.

(Naturally, people are reluctant to do anything that's not "default" ) It's simple but not easy to sell. Yet.