Social media in a profit-seeking system can't be fixed. Profit-seeking provides the evolutionary pressure to turn it into something truly destructive to users. The only way it can work is via ownership by a benevolent non-profit. However, that would likely eventually give in to corruption if given enough time. Outlawing it completely, as well as regulating the algorithmic shaping of the online experience, is probably the inevitable future. Unfortunately, it won't come until the current system causes a complete societal facture and collapse.
If enough users are destroyed, advertisers (social media's real customers) won't have sufficient markets for their products, and profits will fall. Social media can't destroy its users and survive.
Seriously though, I disagree. Social media in a profit-seeking system can work if the users are the ones who pay. The easiest way for this to work-now that net neutrality is no longer a thing-is bundling through user's phone bills. If Facebook et al. were bundled similarly to how Netflix, Hulu and other streaming apps are now packaged with phone plan deals, then the users would be the focus, not the advertisers. This might require that social media be legislatively required to offer true ad-free options, though.
I think you're on the right track, but not getting to what I view as the logical conclusion: publicly funded options, free at the point of service to everyone. I've also humored the idea of taking it one level of abstraction further: a publicly funded cloud computing infrastructure, access to which is free (up to a level of usage). People could then choose to use these cloud computing resources to host, say, federated instances of open social networks.
I mean, it will never happen, but I think it's a path that resolves a lot of problems, and therefore a fun thought experiment.
