[xoac]

Exactly. If social media apps had a configurable old style non-algorithmic feed the problem would be dramatically smaller.

[Symbiote]

With FBPurity: https://www.fbpurity.com/ I have Facebook on my desktop computer exactly as it used to be in the 2000s when I signed up: content only from my "friends" and a few chosen sources (a band I like etc).

The newsfeed is very slow to load, as to fill the screen the extension must make twenty plus requests while hiding 99% of what Facebook's addiction machine returns.

[intended]

People prefer the more engaging option, based on testing when preferences are offered.

You aren’t really putting a fair choice here. A product that is tested and refined to be viscerally attractive to our brains, vs will power.

This means you have the illusion of individual choice, with practical addiction at scale.