I would put it down less to a nerfarous evil plan, where some exec DECLARES “I will string people along for more money MWUHAHAHAHA” to the the reason to purposely make things worse. I don’t think that fully excuses them though

They absolutely use some kind of engagement maximizing algorithm in their matching algo, and use engagement metrics in their A/B tests, and with these two forces, no one needs ot make the decisions to enshittify, the decisions are made for leadership.

I would pose one argument for why “good” competitors don’t exist. is that anyone else following modern business practices will fall into the same solution without making a single decision other than to follow best practice (and iff they choose to eschew data driven decision making then they are fumbling around in the dark and unable to improve)