Its funny to me, and ive commented on it before, but the slop out there is all corporate AI (even down to power use, a common complaint I see that really doesnt apply to local llm). The appearance is due to the algos on social media as you mention.

The core issue is always the corporations creating the problems.

Ive started to plan a cyberdeck for fun, but also as a potential mobile device approach going forward. I've started getting my family into decentralized solutions by having my wife (aka my litmus test) use some clients for matrix, Lemmy, etc, and see what she likes. I plan to deploy for family and friends in the same way I do my media server - its here, I won't put this elsewhere, access to one thing is access to all things, here's some handy links!

So far, so good.

So to sum up - yeah I think when people see decentralized social media it reminds them of what friendster, MySpace, twitter, etc were before it went from 'new' to 'algorithmically sorted with suggestions you have no choice over'.

Edit: Just realized how ADHD this reply was, hope it comes across sensible.