Social media has it's drawbacks, but large hosted services exist for good reasons and have spawned entire new industries. An independent artist couldn't host a server to share their work (especially if they want to share content like video widely), or run a store capable of handling a spike of traffic if they became popular. Also the network effects of the platforms give huge benefits allowing at least a portion of promising diamonds in the rough to be found and shared (even if they are mixed in with a bunch of dumb clickbait and cheap knockoffs of products as discussed in the recent Etsy boycott thread).

It's definitely not all roses, but I don't really see a clear path out of this. Because for whatever feelings people have about big tech, YouTube, Facebook, Etsy, Instagram have all driven billions in business for non-tech companies. And they've done it by creating experiences that are engaging to end consumers. Sure we might see traffic exchange hands among the big players, and there will be other successful new networks like we have seen with TikTok. But I think people don't want to self host for good reasons.