Reddit is a good example of an alternative system, and it works because subreddits serve as lower-variance composable streams as well as shared digital spaces. Even though your main feed is partially driven by a recommendation engine, it never contains any content that you didn't subscribe to (ignoring ads, of course). Instead, you may see a "posts from other subreddits" section that breaks up the feed explicitly to offer alternatives. If you're interested in a particular topic, you can drop into that subreddit, where you'll see pretty much the same view as everyone else. In all these cases, you're always in control.

I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit actually has the best data on their user's preferences, because they let them explicitly decide what they want rather than playing this "hot and cold" game like TikTok. Those platforms also only let you subscribe to individual accounts, so they have to infer what your interests actually are.