They have done this to such a degree, that people are willing to "buy likes" from secondary markets in order to appear popular on a platform that they have no ownership over and offers nothing tangible in return.
For me, it's more or less like creating a feeling of satisfaction and fufilment when in actual real-time these euphoria derived from these centralised entities hardly brings and value. I think a lot of people lives in this delusion and some are putting these audience to use fo enrich themselves. The celebrities and the artists for example.
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I think the general social media encourages instant gratification - small and continual dopamine hits - rather than any kind of long-term satisfaction from building something more.
The promise of a great (monetary) success if you gather thousand (millions) of likes at those platforms, the "salivation" effect.