> a lack of competition allowed the company to shift its focus away from users—and toward its bottom line

Competition or lack there-of had fuck all to do with it. Meta was always focused on it's bottom line and never gave a damn about it's users beyond what value they could extract from them. It certainly was never your "friend", fair-weather or otherwise. Just because their marketing and PR tried to tell you otherwise didn't mean it was indicative/authentic to their actual corporate/internal ethos.