I am in my 40s, so certainly not too young. Depending on how you define social media, they have had sort order besides 'latest posts first' for about as long as listing sites have existed.

There is no sarcasm; does anyone genuinely only browse sites like hackernews by viewing the 'new' page? That is what the comment is advocating, that the only view should be the new page, with submissions listed by post date only.

If discovery is by a separate page dedicated to popular stuff, how is that any better? Whatever 'algorithm' is used to create that page would have the same problems that people are complaining about; why would putting it on a different page change anything? That is sort of how things are currently; you can view a feed by 'latest first' or by the 'algorithm'. You can choose either one, but most people prefer the algorithm version because it curates.

People WANT curation. You can argue with the particular type of curation, but I think the concept itself is pretty universally desired.