Can someone explain why Meta makes such bad design decisions?

I logged into Instagram from a browser yesterday and for the first time they offered me a modal to 'Freshen up my feed' by following a bunch of suggested accounts. Fair enough, but the kicker was that this modal forced me to follow new accounts before it would let me see my feed again. Until I selected accounts and clicked submit, the only button I could click to clear the modal was greyed out.

This sounds like I'm throwing shade, but I genuinely don't understand what would cause the Instagram team to make a design decision like this. It is so obviously anti-human and annoying that I can't comprehend why they continue to do stuff like this.

I get that on some level forcing users to follow more accounts adds to engagement and growth, so on an economic level it makes sense. But in practice what they're actually doing is proving to their user base that they're a soulless company, over and over again.

Can someone explain to me why they keep doing stuff like this? Is it some kind of cultural dynamic where employees are unable to stand up for human decisions? Or are they really just this oblivious?