> Just looking at the Meta article: The article cites "pressure from conservative critics and customers" as the reason, not financial performance. The Meta representative was quoted pointing to "legal and policy landscape" changes. Nothing about if or how the initiative affected the company's bottom line.
Of course they won't say it doesn't work. They'll cite external pressure or other reason. But they get pressure from customers for privacy and other issues, yet that doesn't phase them much. So if they saw clear advantage to the policy, say it just improved their bottom line, stock price, etc, they would have easily brushed away the "pressure" and said "sorry, we're here to make a profit and this makes us a profit, tough luck".