I've been enjoying using Signal for "social media". I can share things with my friends without being subjected to ads or having my data mined.

There's also a promising Alpha app called Circles from Futo that uses Matrix to do something similar.

Every popular social media wants to maintain complete control and just shove content down your throat, rather than allow you to curate your feed at all. Even subscription-based ones like Strava give you absolutely no control over what's in your feed.