I thought this as well, but I’ve started to think they could be useful if I follow way more aggressively, and create a list that is “what I want on my feed” and default to that. It’s stupidly cumbersome, but would have the desired effect. Of course you’re right that they should just let you add directly to a list - I think the reasoning for the current functionality is to limit stalking/harassment, though I don’t exactly understand how that is inhibited at all.

Some game-of-telephone misinformation originating from this article - though it has gone from Google killed it (which this article states), to it was a protocol that allowed Facebook and Google to communicate and then got killed, to Facebook killed it.