without paying £18 per month
yes, now I'm paying 10 times more.
Don't mind it though, experience is better in every way possible besides occasional maintenance need, but it's definitely not for everyone.
Could be done cheaper, but it's tradeoffs all the way as with everything in life.
Opinionated piece with no substance or analysis, author already has some answer in mind and is trying to spin everything around to support it.
Just to illustrate:
In this very link, in court-released emails Zuck states they're buying Instagram because they have good growth and Facebook mobile usability is shit. It's just 2 different types of social networks, back in 2012 you couldn't even DM on Instagram, it wasn't a replacement for Facebook by any means and vice versa. Zuck was just not happy that people spend their phone screen time outside of his reach.