Great and informative post, I liked your journey and I even learned a thing when you said about your "experience with Myspace and 5000 confirmed attendees" which tells me we can't count on some of these platforms or maybe most of them, I remember the old Hi5 and Myspace social media though (I was not using them a lot), and then we joined and used the new ones too (FB,Insta), though they kept changing from time to time or even some of them abandoned. and later we could understand that politics also affect most of these platforms, to let governments/systems/parties lead or affect people through these new media instead of TV Programs and TV News.

And you cleverly pointed at the most important part of those platforms which is "Algorithm". even the content is not important, only the system's algorithm choose who should be at the top. and a lot of wasting contents also comes up, and a lot of great contents buried under those meaningless videos like a guy who can dance like a chicken is more valuable than Joe Satriani's new single track :D

(I don't know if it is ok to write this here or not, I don't wanna change the topic but I tested something on Youtube's short videos, I always uploaded my high quality music productions and songwriting until, one night I started playing Metallica drums for their song's One, with my fingers on my computer desk, and it simply reached 3000 views which I didn't have for my other short video contents, haha (That's when I understood how can Algorithm work))

platforms like Instagram and Facebook or even Tik Tok, Twitter/X might have their own benefits for people but they also have a lot of negativity, for example platforms like Instagram which created a kind of system that users are in a never ending conflict, or a kind of race, they run and run to reach something that they can never reach, and hardly they can beat the algorithm to reach a point. (some people even use hatered as a way to become famous and to make their business, I remember that it was also working as part of the algorithm, there was even a singer who was insulting his fans or even other people who were not his fans, so the more he got haters he becomes more famous)

I think those systems work mostly with one fuel, people's conflicts.
on Instagram, TikTok, etc, anything that users are doing heavily affect other users, though people are not knowing this and they think everything is happening normally. as FB and Instagram primarily based on Psychologics of people, the things that I mentioned are happening undoubtedly, (conflicts, hate, addiction, etc)

and things like Story also become so important to users in a point that they feel bad if someone they know is not watching them or liking them. and these social media also make people more sensitive to anything.
and the number of contents that user should keep scrolling and sweeping is like never ending, like a TV that never has an ending program, so it keeps brains awake from morning till late night. (usually with meaningless or cheap contents)

I would like to write even more about what is happening with addicted people to these platforms, think I was playing a movie and asked one of my friends to watch it with me, he couldn't stop looking at his phone, It was like he is somewhere else, and then he took a photo of the movie and made a story about it, like: look I am watching this movie :D later when the movie finished, he said: what a bad movie, why did you play this? (he didn't even watch it). (Think if you go to a concert with people who only look at their social media feeds, and miss the live concert that they are just standing in it and recording it to post it as a story)

I really hate that random scrolling system, which is also addictive and every 30 seconds (less or more) people go from one content to another content, it is a great practice to lose your focus and be like a person who cant stay on one thing and keep jumping from one idea to another idea, it is like being in a Metalica concert and suddenly when Kirk is playing solo, you jump to a Comedy show by Jim Carrey and suddenly while Jim is doing his best act you jump to a scene that shows a car crash that 10 people died. think what will happen to one's brain with all these random data that comes from anywhere without your will.

I actually left them and deleted them from my phone, and I only use Insta and Facebook chat boxes on my desktop(laptop) to contact some friends who are using those platforms.

I also have to add that it is clear as day that someone like Zuckerburg is not looking for creating something new or updating or upgrading the apps like insta and facebook, we keep seeing same old tools in these platforms, I recently heard that he wants to add dislike button to Instagram for Test, while Reddit already had it for a long time. (I should say Instagram is an old trash but they could make billions of people addicted to use it daily)

also, Mark is well known for selling people's information and data to organizations, I saw people keep posting their locations for every moment, even if they wanted to drink a glass of water, and I said damn, he knew what he built and he knew how to get all information without asking people to give their info to him.
so he have access to information about any region on this planet, for example if US wants to know what is going on in some people's minds in a state, province, city or even small villages. they have access to everything! I can open this more but I don't wanna write an article here.

The future of social media, with the ones that are powerful and has a lot of money is really dark, but if people leave those platforms and join platforms like Hive (though decentralized world is also not perfect but it is way better than those famous social media), and keep building it (Hive for example) to something powerful, separated from all those data sellers, people can have their own space and social media, and it will be great.