They have released some good open source technology, but as the OP said, Meta hasn't much going for it apart from addictive apps for showing ads

You never heard of MySpace?

Seriously? Of course they did. An easy counter-example is MySpace, which launched several months before Facebook's very first appearance as a Hot Or Not mimic (which predates Zuck by 3 years), and had many millions more users for years (especially while FB was restricted to colleges).

Major competition and a lot of money was going into social media around then (and for a couple years prior), FB is just the eventual winner.

Social networks were all the rage. He executed the best of all and had the right strategy to build the user base.

Facebook has no content production experience though, and when they do dip their toes into that market its via AI slop (like their official AI accounts on instagram). I think this is because they don't value the human element of art at all.

They would be entirely reliant other content providers, which is a rough place to be in when you have to deal with actual studios and not just independent creators. Independent creators are easier for Facebook to exploit since they are usually small operations and dependent on facebook/instagram for market reach.

...sometimes