Very true. I have to confess to a very leading question there, as I am building exactly this and thinking long and hard about monetisation. I do like the cable analogy and think it's very true.
I think ads can be done better/more ethically than currently as well though - whether that be less of them, less "native" so they don't appear exactly like posts from your family/friends and with less granular targeting - whether advertisers would go for it is another matter entirely though...
Is there now a gap for a new social platform that goes back to chronologically ordered content from those you choose to follow/friend rather than algorithmically curated content from other sources designed to lure you in?
Yeah, the problem is those that are seeing/potentially being manipulated by this are (I would imagine) highly unlikely to use a browser extension or (more likely, in developing nations where Facebook is forcing itself on users through the Internet.org project) on the mobile app anyway
The quote “There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that is not being responded to because it is not considered enough of a PR risk to Facebook,” kind of sums it up!
Django is a sensational piece of open source software - I've used it on so many projects.
Seen some replies saying it's a pain to deploy - look at guides for Heroku and Google's App Engine - both are super simple processes. If you want more control AWS Lightsail also has a great guide.
I think ads can be done better/more ethically than currently as well though - whether that be less of them, less "native" so they don't appear exactly like posts from your family/friends and with less granular targeting - whether advertisers would go for it is another matter entirely though...