Of course, everybody is trying to develop tricks like yours to resist, but I don't think we should just accept as fact that we need to have those tricks to escape the attention grabbing behemoths with the endless money they throw at this optimisation problem.

It's not like algorithms designed to maximise engagement regardless of societal cost are a law of nature we can never escape. It's just unregulated power, which society has worked very hard to limit and align with "the common good" in the past. Free reign for technocrats that display beauty ads to teenage girls after they deleted their selfies, as a single heinous example, is proof that our control mechanism (democracy in the broader sense, I suppose) isn't working anymore, but that also doesn't mean we should roll over and accept it.

I'm with you that personal responsibility is of course important. The message of Johann Hari's book I tried to convey was (paraphrasing again) "Don't be too hard on yourself when you eventually slip up. It's a steep uphill battle."