They set out to build a platform where anyone, no matter how small, could compete with big media on a level playing field based on a straightforward metric: whether a user cares enough about a post that they're willing to engage with it. Publishers get rewarded for producing compelling content, users get to see more content they care about, and Facebook makes money since people spend more time on the site. Everybody wins.
And they succeeded wildly at this. But as it turns out, the things people respond to most are spam and hate and conspiracy theories.
My mental construct of Facebook is analogous to Morty following the path defined by the death crystal but towards the end goal of 'the most money'.
Collecting money.
Replace "paperclips" with "clickbait" and "human life" with "the right to privacy". "Artificial intelligence" then becomes Mark Zuckerborg.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...