They absolutely are. They are paying with their data rather than cash.
Meta does sell ad-free membership for Instagram and Facebook, it should make the subscriber a customer.
That's not really true anymore since they started offering subscriptions.
FB's paid customer support for users has not been helpful to me. Their support staff can't explain how their policies are implemented. They lie to users who manage to wade through the automated support morass. And when you speak to a human you discover they're incapable of correcting mistakes.