Arguably, the curative approach lets me hear higher quality content from folks who have different perspectives than me, compared to just leaving the floodgates open.

An echo chamber is bad, but I think a gatewayed chamber is not only not bad but required for effective communication, learning and development of new ideas. You can't enforce the Chatham House Rule unless you get to choose who gets in.

[0]: This doesn't have to be by any external source, it can be just by whom you choose to follow on Twitter.

[1]: Everybody gets to talk about the need to defund the police or #stopthesteal or whatever position the platform supports because more voices behind your position is more power.

Part of what makes these social networks echo chambers are the unconscious ways we navigate them: how long we linger on a post, stay in the site, etc. I’m not sure whether conscious decisions like being judicious with the follow and block buttons would pull you into more of an echo chamber than the algorithm does, especially if you’re selecting for things other than “this captures my short-term attention span.”