No doubt the specific algorithms used by social media companies are bad. But what is "non-algorithmic" curation?

Chronological order: promotes spam, which will be mostly paid actors. Manual curation by "high-quality, trusted" curators: who are they, and how will they find content? Curation by friends and locals: this is probably an improvement over what we have now, but it's still dominated by friends and locals who are more outspoken and charismatic; moreover, it's hard to maintain, because curious people will try going outside their community, especially those who are outcasts.

EDIT: Also, studies have shown people focus more on negative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias) and sensational (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(neuroscience)#Salien...) things (and thus post/upvote/view them more), so an algorithm that doesn't explicitly push negativity and sensationalism may appear to.