That specific criticism is a pretty small one, and whilst I do understand that its lack of customisation options is pretty annoying, it's a lot easier to set up GNOME quickly and have it look good than other desktop environments like XFCE in my opinion. KDE is also pretty nice, though.
Exactly, it's worrying to think of how powerful Facebook could have been if they had successfully bought Snapchat back in 2013 like they tried to do; its usage amongst young people is very high and they'd have easily dominated every age group in terms of social media.
The GNOME DE does this as well. Whenever I have a fresh Linux install and I try to enter the passwords in the "Online Accounts" section I'm reminded of it... so frustrating.
[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/30/apple-to-focus-on-ios-p...