> ephemeral nature of Snapchat, combined with the lack of public "likes" makes it a much more positive experience to post

That's an interesting observation, something's gone highly dysfunctional with social media feeds - every platform I've watched, they used to be good but have all become a mental tar-pit for depression, fwd:fwd:fwd-ing viral outrage, virtue signaling, othering, etc.

You can free yourself from those in the tar-pit and simultaneously solve the cycle of ads/monetization-fuckery simply by switching to something like Hubzilla, but the pattern suggests something deeply rotten at the core of social media that you still might not be escaping, and perhaps this persistence and instant ratings is what feeds it - encouraging the careful sculpting of precious(sss) virtual identity, probably triggering brain reward pathways like a social one-armed bandit.

Cheers. It hadn't occurred to me that innocent things like "like" buttons might be a part of the deeper problem.