Ads are just what pays the bills. The cluster is also used for all sorts of useful things, like mass communication, especially during emergencies, support groups, and providing information to help manage a pandemic.

Software engineers aren't nuclear physicists or machinists. I'm not sure how you want to use them to build nuclear reactors.

It’s a very reductive take. Meta is helping a lot of people get and keep in touch for free (like my family is all over the place and we use WhatsApp extensively to communicate). There’s clearly a demand for this, and doing it for the price of a couple of ads doesn’t seem sad to me

Ads act as a recommendation engine, helping people find solutions to their problems sometimes before they ever realize there is a solution.