What is required for us to shift from moderation to personal agency?

This question needs a lot more context into what you mean by moderation, but maybe to try and narrow it down: make spam so unprofitable no one does it.

We get so stuck in the “offense” piece, but there is a veritable army of people in the world trying to make the internet as unpleasant as possible. Look at the average comment thread in response to a tweet musk or another famous figure. It’s garbage memes, crypto spams, low effort content and impersonators. If “personal agency” means doing a whole bunch of busy work to sift through a river of shit to get to the occasional gold nugget…

I’ve stopped using Reddit because so many of the comments are just low effort or uninteresting. So then what do you mean by personal agency, in a world where bad actors: spammers, scammers, and trolls are participating alongside the rest of us.

Giving people accurate tools to control what is shown and recommended to them.

This is at odds with the current dual masters of advertising and "generating engagement" (aka creating fake growth) (aka showing you upsetting content so you react in a volatile way and post something).

Quite big obstacles.

That could mean more than one thing.

Do you mean moderation by others, as in moderation of social media posts, being replaced by active self-restraint?

Or do you mean self-moderation, as in not eating that tasty cream bun, being replaced by "saying yes" to more things?

I think generally both are undermined by technology, values and systems of imposition that corrode self-belief. Often that's done under the banner of "convenience". Technology that makes "life easier" also takes away agency.