Abstractions like these always target the least common denominator. But React has the "component" advantage so i'm not dismissing its usefulness. it's good for a category of projects.
1) There are a ton of native APIs that accomplish exactly the same things, but have different APIs because different people built them and there's no pressure to make them consistent. Examples: layouting (just calculate x, y, width, height's of a view tree), animation, storage, networking, touch handling, the list goes on... it's a waste to have to learn the implementation specific quirks of each platform.
2) We've focused on making sure we can make apps at least as good as the native ones for the platform. Specifically this has meant exposing platform specific apis (e.g. Android's material touch ripple, iOS's gaussian blurs, etc), allowing arbitrary new ones to be added, and encouraging designers to still design their apps for each platform individually.
> Facebook Ads Manager is built entirely using React Native.
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1014532261909640/react-nativ...
That being said, Ads Manager users are still mostly just "users". I know a middle aged woman using it to manage ads for her side business for example, regular people are using 100% React Native apps daily.
Let me spell this out for you...
A Facebook app, is an app made by facebook, which obviously i'm referencing the one that they are talking about in the article your commenting on. And yes, it was made using React Native. Any more questions before you read the article?