The problem social media has is twofold.

People like open social networks. Laugh all you want, but that includes Lemmy. Many people don’t have active social interactions in their life, and social media allows them to talk, share, and discuss with people. The problem is that the users ARE the network, and even the best social networks took years to get their user base up. The monopoly on social media is very hard to break, and most newer networks either rely on gimmicks, or are closed to smaller networks.

The second problem is that the world is so polarising that moderating is expensive. In-person moderation is still by far the best way to do this, but it doesn’t scale well, and companies have no incentive to keep their networks hate-free. Furthermore, the sort of person that is going to own a social network with a holding company floated on the stock market is likely going to have polarising opinions themselves - so good luck getting them to do the right thing and spend money on tens of thousands of people worldwide that will need to sift through the shite reported on social media, and good luck in doing this in a way that is high quality.

Honestly, I think social media won’t die out. I think we’ll see newer networks emerge over time, but they will work around people and work on these problems first, instead of launching and hoping/praying for traction.