YouTube is easily the best “social network” in terms of having high-quality content with minimal manipulation. And I definitely consider it my main form of media consumption.
You just have to curate your feed and add stuff to playlists, not watch whatever is on the logged-out default home page.
What? You have to do a lot of curation and fighting the service itself (hiding shorts) to get to a bearable level. And I did not spend hours clicking things I don't like. I mostly just watch movies/clips I want, but my recommendations are full of clickbait manipulative garbage. So yes, one can find jewels in it - but only if digging through the garbage first.
You just have to curate your feed and add stuff to playlists, not watch whatever is on the logged-out default home page.