My antidote to this was 100% selfhosting from home as you are now on par with the platforms and have a choice to serve yourself.

You cannot stay focused all day and theres nothing wrong with "just show me random dumb stuff" i mean i wont lie, im old and RTL2 was a thing you know even in educated circles. These no tv people read bad fiction instead.

And i actually kinda like the youtube algo to wind down - but i can also just switch to a timeshift archive.

I think the problem is more that these platforms are reeeally comfortable to use and its not that easy to have the same - doable though.

Oh and btw if you wanna go back to blog circles and xmpp and vpn lan games im all in but times are changing.