That's the kind of stuff that always happens when you try to make social media profitable. It's not meant to be but they try it anyway. Now I'm not saying it should be charity work, but a self sustaining smaller community is far better than a shitposty, grifty, chatgpt-bot ridden clusterfuck.
It shouldn't be work at all. It should just be people following people they want to hear from. IMO, there shouldn't be any companies or brands or organizations on it at all.
Just... people. And not "people as corporate entities", just personal stuff. People talking about their day, sharing their personal takes on things, or opinions of things. No sponsorship, no branding, just people.
As for how to fund that, good question. Twitter tried to figure it out for years, and never got it right. But online personalities were never supposed to be a thing. Follow who you know or want to hear from. That's the core of it, and breaking away from it is what causes them to become terrible experiences.
I've seen a shift on Threads recently. Seeing more news-related content on my "for you" feed. A lot of the "influencers" have stopped spam posting since the initial hype died down.