> just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference

No, it's the content that other people engage with. Disregarding the whole "engagement is a good metric of how much you want to see something" bullshit, if you served me food based on what other people like to eat, it would be a weird mix of gluten free vegan stuff, and also coke, pizza and doritos.

I don't want any of that shit. I'm not "many people". I don't need to be fed the same irrelevant garbage as them. But the only way to achieve that is to unfollow everyone and not get many useful updates. Which is what I'm doing, but it's just barely useful, and the popular crap still seeps in at every opportunity.