Apparently FB now prevents certain posts from spreading, making them only visible to the author. An example is one containing "Alex Jones". It's like a shadow ban, except FB will notify the user.
Naval Ravikant made a very good point on Joe Rogan where he said that as soon as social media platforms decided to censor content they started a war they can't win because they end up having to chose sides. He said their position should be (recalling from memory here) "we're a publishing platform not responsible for the content that's being published. If you have a warrant, we'll take it down, otherwise it's hands off". Censoring, demoting or stopping the spread, it's basically the same thing.
They absolutely are making money on the garbage as well, as you said.