You have a myopic view of the internet. I don't use any social media. Unless you consider hn or Reddit that. And I run ad blocker. I spend most of my entertainment, educational, and social interaction budget on the internet. The internet is ducking amazing. I could never publish on tv. I could never consume what normal people published, unfiltered by FCC /network execs/advertisers.
The internet is not social media. Social media is "the masses", the mainstream. And regardless of platform those always suck, banal, lowest common denominator, and manipulated for profit or power.
Checkout of the mainstream, not the internet.
In another 10 years computers may be fast enough to make No Code actually viable at scale, which will enable entirely different types of people to start making things for the first time.
And even failing that, we now have muppets teaching 3-year-olds the basics of coding. Not everyone is going to know how to code in 20 years, but the percentage of new high school graduates who can make a webpage might be comparable to the percentage who can read.
The basic reason the tech industry is fucked up is that the FAANG companies have a monopoly on discovery right now. But that's not going to last forever.
The only real resistance I can think is Tor, but it turns out that the cost of being able to buy psychedelics online is global child rape gangs and a nationwide Fentanyl problem. Not a great trade off, in my opinion.
I don't see any technological way out of this mess.