I think what the big players are going to soon realize, and while I don't like to propose government legislation as a solution to anything, I think I'm going to have to in this case... big tech has gotten too out of control for even the companies themselves to handle, so, who else is going to rein them in? that is my question.
The answer? the government at this point. Unfortunately.
What we can do
I have experience in the social media world, at least that doesn't involve ads. How? Use either cryptocurrency or fiat currency (fiat is not going away any time soon), to pay for either a one-time fee or a subscription model. I'm a former subscriber of Pinboard and I am constantly posting on PNut, pronounced Peanut. I love both, and I think that the cost is fair. Why can't every social network do that? I do agree that if it wasn't Zuck, then, it would have been someone else, and that there are very big problems with Meta as it currently stands.
Meta Prodictions
I think that eventually another company outside of what used to be Facebook will step up and produce something competing, so that we can choose who to give our data to... or maybe we can get the opportunity to pay to use the product without ads. Hopefully, at least. here's to hoping for a good outcome in light of how what was once Facebook failed at cryptocurrency.