Comment by pixl97

>when ads benefitted everyone, the buyer, the seller, and Facebook

As others have stated in this thread, it's called the acquisition phase. Get people hooked, build the network, make it be the place that people have to be at.

After that comes the exploit phase where said network effects make it hard to leave. You can rake in billions (trillion?) of dollars this way. Who cares if it eventually kills the company, you've made more money than god at this point.