I'm not a social media guy. Like you I use youtube, but it is mostly for music listening. Yeah I have a gmail account but am trying to make the switch to Proton mail. I have/had a facebook account when it first came out, did not like it still do not like it and still do not use it.
I got real annoyed with the likes of ICQ and one other instant message type system way way back in the day, and have never since signed up for another instant type message. people can send a letter, send an email, or make a phone call, and since very few have any of that information I am not being ping ponged every 12 minutes.
I still think it was an internal scrub thing, and it looks like it was an internal error and not an outside DDoS type attack, so I think no one will ever know how much purging went on.
My wife gets far more into it than I ever have... I just don't care for the eternal cycle of people's inflated "highlight reels" of their lives.
I'm sure they did a lot of scrubbing. They are huge, high profile and constantly at risk of being taken to task for being a monopoly.
Many years back I worked for a small educational software company — a subsidiary of a larger company — and evidently some of the stuff we'd been doing was against parent company policy. So when there was going to be a "visit" (aka "audit") everybody got to work on removing every conceivable reference to anything that might invite comment or sanctions... code, email, memos, post-it notes on people's cubicle walls.. you name it.
Facebook? I'm sure they were just prepping to be poked by the FCC, SEC and Congress.