Ive heard of it, and want to use it, but unfortunately the only reason Im still sticking with instagram is because I have very dear friends who would never change to anything non-mainstream.
This is called the network effect, it's a social problem and no amount of technology will solve this. So your choices are either to stop using apps where you are the product, and obviously convince your friends to stop that as well, or grin and bear it. Maybe think about what you did 20 years ago and do that instead.
It absolutely is not. You are using enshitification incorrectly. This is the core business model of facebook since the very beginning. They don't give a shit about people spending $13/mo. They absolutely do not want people to choose that option. This is literally about about a legal loophole they think they have found to get around GDPR and have people "opt-in" to the same kind of data collection their business is based on.