I hope it’s not that black-and-white, that it’s possible to have a sane social network with algorithmic feed, only we need to design the algorithms around users’ needs first.

If you judge users’ needs by “things they’ll pay attention on and engage with”, well… it is exactly what all the current algorithms are good at right now. It’s just, in my opinion, bad for the society at large, as rage baiting, slop-posting and etc. is great in achieving that.