Clearly “all the problems other social media has” are present without federation, so the claim federation leads to those problems is kind of silly.

The problem is users, if all instances were defederated then each instance would have less which is what you want.

Federation would be fine if users could only interact with people on their own instance/see content from their own.

Do… Do you understand what federation means in this context?

Also, have you considered just, like, going outside?

Yes to both. It doesn’t change the issue.