> It isn't that Facebook is wasting the vast majority of their infrastructure, though, it's that the application does a lot more for each user.
I don't think we can be sure Facebook isn't wasting money on their infrastructure. They've shown themselves to be pretty wasteful in the past.[0][1] They're just rich enough to get away with it.
Facebook's application may be doing a lot more to their users than a simpler app, but I doubt it's doing that much for users.
But if they can choose between saving 10% on infrastructure or adding 5% ad revenue (through more optimizations), the additional revenue is worth more.
Just running Facebook, Instagram & Co as a platform would probably be much cheaper than $8 per user.
In any system, there will be a tension between shrinking cost/benefit, and spending more to achieve better benefit-cost. This has nothing to do with capitalism. It's a fundamental aspect of systems where there is a non-fixed relationship between investment and return (i.e. almost all systems of any kind).
The notion that "[financial] investment and [financial] return" are the only two factors worth considering in "all systems of any kind" is an artefact of capitalist thinking.
That notion is something absent from both text and subtext of my comment. You are the one who inserted it. Investment and cost come in many forms other than the financial.
I don't think we can be sure Facebook isn't wasting money on their infrastructure. They've shown themselves to be pretty wasteful in the past.[0][1] They're just rich enough to get away with it.
Facebook's application may be doing a lot more to their users than a simpler app, but I doubt it's doing that much for users.
[0] https://www.cio.com/article/3197554/why-is-facebooks-ios-app...
[1] https://jaxenter.com/facebooks-completely-insane-dalvik-hack...