What has happened to "Social Media"?

I am actually asking. I feel like we could have predicted this back when MySpace was being abandoned. The old places where people congregated online are really shells of their former self. It is now at a point where, if big tech wasn't fronting the bill, these old town-square-esque places would be actual garbage heaps (they are not far off). LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter all suffer from some form of max exodus or endemic apathy that was not there even 5 years ago. The alternatives that somehow draw people are also not so far from this being a real challenge, i.e. TikTok. The treadmill is accelerating.

I will not claim to know what is next for those of us who live digital lives that are nearly as grand as our meat space lives but it concerns me that the experimental response is to lower the barriers of entry for content creation with AI, as if content was the main product of these online spaces, and not actual human connection. Content fuels growth but with the expectation of community. When users realize the content production is purely commercial/transactional, they bounce. This is seen network wide but also with individual creators. I don't think anyone here wouldn't be able to name at least one creator that didn't sell out.

I have ideas of my own about what the internet and online spaces may become over the next 5-10 years but I am curious what other people think. Are we doomed? Is Digg going to save us all? Is AI going to saturate the feed even more?