At a personal level, I see a conflict of interest between my intention of using social media vs. interests of those social media companies.
Like most people, I want to use social media to keep in contact with family and friends around the world and connect with people with similar interests. However, providing such online services to me cost money, and there is no free lunch - someone has to pay for it.
I think it would be laughable to suppose that Facebook or any other social media operators care deeply about enabling me to connect with family and friends. (Perhaps that can be true when a service is new - after all how many business are started with bad intentions?) As the business expands providing such connection increasingly becomes cost of doing business; what drives social media companies are primarily our attention, our clicks and the resulting profit to other businesses - those who pay social media companies in exchange for our attention.
I resent such ‘indirect’ business models and conflict of interest. I understand that providing such services cost money, and am willing and able to pay for it in exchange for a plain vanilla service, without detriment to my data, attention and well being. However, with few exceptions this is not possible in the largest social media platforms.
I suppose this is one of many reasons I purchase Apple products. They are not inexpensive, but at least there are reasons to believe that Apple is amply compensated and there is less incentive for them to do anything funny with my data and attention. The alignment of interest is not perfect (planned obsolescence?), but at least it is there.
I make it a point to subscribe to and financially support businesses/creators whose contents I value, such as The Economist and TidBITS. With enough support we can even unlock the commons so the content becomes public good and one does not have to pay to enjoy it. I like such simple and transparent business models much better.
(May I also take this opportunity to thank @ace and friends for publishing TidBITS. Please don’t become another social media company!)