Snort. Giggle. Boy have I heard that one before. Everyone says that about every acquisition that isn't an acquihire. Hell, a lot of the time they even mean it.

I have yet to see a single acquisition that promised independence and autonomy actually maintain it for an extended period of time (say, multiple years).

"We're so happy to be joining Billion Corp. We feel that they will let us stay independent and stick to our goals. We will continue to provide the same awesome experience you all came to know and love before we sold out."

"We're so happy to be acquiring talent instead of finding it. We will totally not, not make their project theirs instead of ours, depending on our lawyers, and our shareholders. Frankly, we're just glad we didn't have to actually spend time building a good product and hiring people like these folks, since they would've never joined us in the first place."

That said...is anyone who actually thought about it really that surprised?

They are almost always being deceptive when they make claims of "independence", "nothing will change", etc. The truth is, most companies choose to maximize shareholder value/profits over other ethical constraints because C-level compensation is chained to the shareholder's interests as best as can be managed in most companies.

It would have been nice if Facebook was more like Buffer [e.g. Transparent, Honest], but does anyone ever really seeing a company like Buffer growing to even 5% of Facebook's current Market Cap [150 Billion]?

Deception works at scale. Politics have proved that quite well, unfortunately.