It sounds like the author got locked in some sort of, "I follow" loop where he got used to trusting certain companies to keep him interested and entertained, then they sold out to ads and the lowest common denominator of entertainment audiences.
The Internet is the same as it's always been! There's infinite ways to use it, full of all sorts of fun communities, new hobbies to spend too much money on (hehe), and endless amounts of people to engage with.
If your iPhone is bothering you that much, maybe it's time to try Android or go totally off the grid (so to speak) and install something like GrapheneOS on a used phone (the horror!).
How about designing your own damned phone? It's not impossible. Make a thick ass brick with a huge battery and dual screens that barely fits in your pocket but can do amazing things a normal phone can't: Give it an IR emitter so you can turn off TVs from a distance. A CO2 sensor so you can tell when any room you're in is getting stuffy. A friggin laser projector. Whatever!
Instead of being a passive intake of all things corporate Internet, make something. Contribute!
I'm old. I was in college when the first personal computers made their debut. I was a married adult when I got my first computer (a Timex 1000). I was a father by the time the Internet appeared in public. The first cell phone I used (not owned) was the size and weight of a brick.
I keep thinking that, though it's been abused and in many ways turned against us, this is the world many of us dreamed of. Baby Boomers grew up wanting Star Trek communicators. When we got Commodore 64s and Apple IIs, we wanted them to be portable. When they became portable, we wanted them to be connected everywhere.
Just because greed and scrabbling for power corrupted the people who made all these dreams come true, it doesn't mean the dreams didn't come true. We asked for the tech, and we got it. Now I guess we have to take responsibility for how we use it.