[kevinbluer]

One technique could be to start unfollowing certain people. Note that this is different from unfriending them and afaik there's nothing that will notify them to the fact.

Perhaps start by unfollowing those that post the "political garbage, pointless memes, etc". Quite quickly you should start to see your feed be a little more streamlined / less noisy.

On a related note I went even further and unfollowed everyone so my feed is now completely empty. As such it proactively requires me to view profiles of connections that I care about or view my list of "close friends" which is a feed in itself. That said, I barely use it anymore (which was my original goal).