I listened to the Meta investor call that forms the bulk of the article and for what it's worth, Zuckerberg framed the low monetization as a conscious part of their product strategy -- that they spend long periods refining the experience with little consideration of ad revenue, and then only afterwards, as a somewhat separate endeavor, begin to investigate ways to monetize efficiently. They've been hugely successful rolling out successive products/experiences in this manner.

A lot of the perceived gap between short-form video and other social media's profitability can likely just be explained by TikTok's relatively nascent ad platform -- you could substitute TikTok with Twitter and make the case that it's text-based social apps that are worse ad businesses. My guess is it's more about the ad infrastructure itself than the experience you're bolting it on to.

But it's also interesting to think that TikTok made a product that's too good at retaining users' attention, such that they can't be tantalized by an ad to interrupt their addiction.