The squeeze is getting tighter because mass data collection of the world population is perhaps a very questionable and ethically wrong business model for a private company and instead of developing the "Metaverse" which would make it even easier maybe Facebook should have looked at opportunities to turn their users into paying customers by providing valuable products and features that are worth paying for. The way you describe it is as if they have their hands tied together and because ad revenue was their initial model to success it means they cannot ever have any other profit model anymore, but I think that is wrong and that's where they've made a mistake.
It certainly does make you wonder which Meta execs believed that all of Facebook's ethical, legal, and political problems somehow "vanish" just because they've added an extra dimension and are trying to do "Facebook, Now in 3D". It feels like playground naivety by children that there's that much difference in real world consequences between scrolling Facebook on a 2D plane and scrolling it in 3D instead. "We'll just escape our pursuers and hard problems by jumping into 3D! Woo!" said the kids imagining the park slide was a rocket ship. It's such a bizarre response to "our current business model is breaking down and we are having a hard time with regulators, politicians, and trust from the general public".
