Instead of Google/Facebook CPU cycles being spent on rendering their content, it's now the client devices, while the Google/Facebook infrastructure is "just" serving the data.
Most of what you are going to see people argue about are cyclical fads. A pendulum. We try A and it doesn’t work. So we try !A. And when people forget why we stopped doing A someone tries it again over and over.
How are things different this time should be your second question. Your first question is what is the middle ground? Boolean logic falls on its face in the real world. If 1 is bad that doesn’t mean 200 is better. If 200 was bad the solution is not 1. The best answer is probably three.