As someone that has to parse through hundreds of thousands of pages and posts a year on Facebook to remove stolen content, I can tell you with certainty that Facebook has a massive bot problem. It's why you see so much repetitive, watered down content. My kids call me a boomer anytime they see Facebook open because it is as uncool as a pair of velcro tennis shoes from Wal-Mart. Facebook has been turning a blind eye to the bots and the copyright thieves so they could boost "unique users" and other user stats. These are really, really easy accounts to spot and could be removed very easily. There are money farms set up in just about every foreign country now that have thousands of pages that will just rip content and repost dozens of pics and videos throughout the day eating up ad revenue. This is driving down ad effectiveness and therefore driving down ad revenue even farther as the average real user demographic gets older and less appealing. They are caught in a downward spiral with real people leaving the platform while bot numbers are steadily increasing. It's a ticking time bomb.
Facebook is in big trouble and if the metaverse doesn't hit a home run in the next year I'm quite confident that a Myspace like collapse is coming. The better content creators are already giving less and less time to the platform in favor of youtube and tiktok. We are all seeing our ad revenue fall to next to nothing and they refuse to protect our content so it becomes more work than it is worth. I've gone from making $25-$30k a year on facebook to barely ever posting on my page so that it doesn't lose followers in case it ever comes back. A friend of mine just sold a 150k follower monetized account for $500. A few years ago that account could make $500 a month with nothing more than fart noises.
Cambridge analitica scandal killed the platform. Facebook went from the top social media platform in the world to chasing off most left leaning people. It was left with a huge majority of Trump supporters which was heading down a road of conspiracy theories and violence that no corporation wanted to be a part of. So Facebook had to either start moderating the platform which P'Oed off the vast majority of daily users or be in a situation where the only advertisers left would be My Pillow. The problems on Facebook are many and the solutions are so few. The best chance Facebook had to remain competitive died when their lobbying attempt to have TikTok banned failed.
It's metaverse or bust for Meta.