I think what's different this time is that Zuckerberg has finally ran out ideas to steal, what Zuck is truly good at is taking a good idea amd wringing every drop of money and data out of the user for ads at the expense of missing good, honest opportunities over the decades. Off the top of my head, how do you think it would have went if Facebook started using the momentum of the popularity of Facebook games to start publishing high quality original games in the 2010s to lock people in instead of going Meta 10 years too late out of desperation?

As for Instagram and Whatsapp, I think that's more on Google fumbling literally everything they touch during Sundar Pichay (Yes, I think even less of Google than Facebook, they are the modern 90s Microsoft) than Facebook.

That's the ultimate issue with basing your company entirely off stealing ideas and internet ads, eventually you get so lazy and addicted to the easy money you forgot how to make good things anymore. Zuck couldn't kill TikTok, but a hungry and cornered Bytedance is now coming for Instagram, so he should honestly should be more worried about that right now.

One other thing is that you can't just throw money at things to beat the market leader, you also need to bring something different to the table. Look at Mixer vs Twitch for example.