The focus wasn’t making the world a better place, or even to provide any value at all to its /users/, who are not its customers. The focus it was and is making money and to take this essay at face value, nothing else. Nothing wrong with making money - honestly.

I’m sure a lot of early employees convinced themselves Facebook had positive social value in addition to making them rich.

That was the default mindset in the early days of the web.

nothing wrong with the concept of making money, sure. let's look at the specific method that meta uses to make money. meta onsells private information about their platform users, to more accurately program those same platform users, according to commands of those supplying money. this can effectively be seen as slavery coercion (because slaves have no privacy, slaves obey their masters command, and nobody truly wants to be a slave). personally I don't agree with slavery and I don't agree with coercion, so I see plenty wrong with the way that meta makes money by middlemanning slavery. therefore I see your generalization as insidious because it downplays other viewpoints without adding anything.