It has nothing to do with design. The problem is not a technical one. It has to do with economics. All social media have two options for their future, and it a

It has nothing to do with design. The problem is not a technical one. It has to do with economics. All social media have two options for their future, and it all comes down to control of their content: 1: Relatively laissez-faire. This is the more "free speech" oriented options. Inevitably, these sites gain reputation for bad behavior and poor conduct in some of their sub-communities. (Racism, sexism, antisemitism, some attempt at illegal activities like piracy, etc, etc) Radical individuals flock to these places. This lack of strong control over what appears on their site leads to wary advertisers and a lack of investors. A site with no advertisers and investors will not grow, period. Hardware costs money. Software costs money. Everything costs money. If lucky, some of these sites manage to stick around - but they are always very niche. Donations don't support a site with 100+ million users and lots of advanced features. 2: Strongly control content. This leads to a very "sanitized" site. Because it's a safe place to do so, investors and advertisers will flock to it if it hits a critical mass. More and more growth is desired, so the site needs to gain mass-market appeal. Over time, it becomes more and more accessible and generic, which erodes whatever original character the site had. Because of the nature of the "average" person when you have such a low gate of entry, the site quickly becomes just another facebook/twitter/reddit. The massive size also leads to enormous amounts of bots, spam, propaganda, etc. You cannot fight these - they are inevitable. Those are your two options. Social media that cannot grow and remains niche, and social media that's filled with generic, low effort garbage content, spam, bots, etc.