[wharvle]

Step 1: Make platforms liable—in civil and criminal senses—for content they elect to promote (not just host). "Elect" includes "an algorithm did it". This also includes things like "an algorithm said we should put this ad, which no human at our company has even looked at, in front of this particular person".

There is no step 2. The worst parts of social media and ad clearinghouses (Jesus, all the scams Google promotes and makes money off of) are destroyed, anything remotely defensible survives. Personalized "algo" feeds and "algo" suggestions? Untenable. Customized ads served from a system no human monitors or checks to make sure they're not serving blatant scams at a massive scale? Gone. Both the incentives and ability to try to connect strangers with one another in ways they didn't directly ask for? Greatly diminished.

Ad-supported media survives (for better or worse). People can still communicate just fine. People can still publish without trouble.