I started as a hobby making fansites for my favorite musicians (join my webring!) as well as vanity sites for myself and my friends in middle and high school. Twenty years later, I’m still basically making vanity sites, but for CEOs and small businesses. I can’t believe they pay me to have this much fun moving boxes around on a screen.

Based on the ubiquitousness of certain memes, I think there are more than you believe. Unless all the posts on qanoncasualties and hermancainaward are fictional.

Memes are a few kb of data and can be copied ad infinitum by a few actors.

Opinions are complex brain structures and take time to develop and grow in the population.

An abundance of the former has almost no correlation with the later.

To draw back in those seeking to cut down their social media usage, in part

I don't see how that makes sense. If you're looking to reduce your social media usage, this change will make that easier..

One way of cutting down usage is to reduce the amount of data you volunteer. Logging out is an easy way to reduce usage. This change compels light users to stay logged in and participating.

Give teddit.net a look.

Nitter.net for Twitter.

I don’t know how long these sites will last with the demand there is for avenues that don’t prompt login.

There are a lot of mirrors, too, as anyone can host an instance, so if those don't work you can always try others.