“Old media” suffered far more from the competition by Craigslist and eBay, which drove away almost all their income in classifieds, which made up around a third to half of all income at average newspapers.

And yet… there just wasn’t any criticism of those companies at any scale comparable to what Facebook gets.

That’s evidende against this theory that journalists are somehow working for the commercial interest of publishers. Which was always quite silly anyway: if there’s one thing a journalist will always brag about, it’s how they screwed over their publisher with some story.

That’s an excellent point. For all of the scams and abuses that could emerge from Craigslist, there was never a concerted media effort to label the platform as dangerous or untrustworthy.

That's the image the media gave but this happened 10-15 years ago before the press turned on companies.

Craigslist was untrustworthy, ebay as well. The whole internet was untrustworthy. Things only became dangerous when non-computer users got a cell phone.

What's important isn't whether they're wrong or not; it's whether anyone cares.