Thought the same. What most first-gen social media users in my bubble want is a messenger (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Matrix whatever) with the possibility to form groups/topics...
ideally this should be open protocol and there should be clients for all systems and of course everybody would have to use the same protocol and not a zoo of different apps :-D
Private? Meta must collect tons of data!
Yeah but they spy on you privately. People love that they care so much about their privacy and people loathe apps that neglect them like signal.org
Yes but good luck convincing all if Europe to follow you when you switch.