Companies start out with a simple plan to generate revenue via providing a service worth paying for, but they all end up falling victim to Goodhart's law.

Social media is an interesting case study in how the pursuit of perpetually increasing profits through metrics can make them become oblivious to the fact they don't really produce any useful product, and that they are wholly reliant upon charity to survive.

They only care if revenue go up and cost go down - so instead of creating legitimate value for those who feed them content, they psychopathically take the path of least resistance and lie about the metrics.

The fact that anything a company says is believed is baffling, but that's a separate discussion.