How can you separate those things? The changes happened because there were more people, and those people were valuable to market too. Hosting and moderation became more expensive, so that created a form of pressure as well. It's convenient to blame the producers (I hate Facebook as much as anyone), but I don't think it's terribly useful to try to hold them accountable.

I believe the economic forces were more or less irresistible. In other words, if the current powers that be had behaved more ethically according to early internet norms, the only thing that would be different is they would have lost in the market and been supplanted by equivalent mass consumer oriented companies pursuing the same enshittification cycle we dislike.

I don't think this can change unless there is a cultural shift away from worshipping at the altar of raw capitalism and GDP at the expense of everything else. The way our political discourse and regulatory capture have evolved recently I am not super optimistic, though I do think the mass hatred of AI across political lines does offer a glimmer of hope.