I mean it’s a bit more complicated than that. In the past not every company had to be profitable. They were just focusing growth over everything else. But with rising cost due to inflation and rising interest rates they suddenly have to become profitable. And then they proceed to make to worst ever business decisions, to become profitable, but achieve the exact opposite.
It’s a pretty severe contradiction of capitalism: When everyone is out to extract as much money as possible, all of it is going to go to whoever the best at doing that, leaving very little for everyone else. This capital isn’t being used to better the human race, it’s sitting in an offshore bank account, funding far right death squads and/or genocides, or being spent on the most vile of child exploitation.
Its simple greed and disdain for their users that they somehow believe if they begin to charge for something that used to be free the use base will simply eat it and be happy.
The problem is they arr charging for a service with attention (ads) and user info currencies that people do not value as much and cannot be easily quantified. This then makes people complacent and lets companies reach for more information, leading to the current enshitification of the internet
