I think you are focusing on a limited view of market makers. Retail forex market-making is a very different, and limited, area of market making.
For example, if you are a company in an international environment then you need somewhere where you can exchange currencies in order to do your business…but you also need something that is even more important than the actual transfer - you also need the confidence that you always can exchange currencies and at an anticipated reasonable level. And that is the market-makers’ role.
The interbank market-making industry is a service that enables international trade to flourish with confidence and great efficiency and diversity. That is a global benefit to everyone.
But,as we all know, the retail forex market is a billion light years away from that kind of market-making. Probably 99.9% of retail brokering serves no additional purpose than earning brokers money and giving traders a speculative gambling pastime that is no different to corner shop “fruit machines” and just as certain to fail.
But I am fairly sure that this does not mean that the brokers are automatically the villains of the situation and aggressively cheat retail traders out of their money (although we all know that at the bottom of the bucket there are those types) and why? because probably those 80% who lose their money lose it through their own incompetence and näivity. The broker just has to get them in and wait.
I think it is an absurd thought that a broker would employ staff or develop programs that seek out and trade against individual traders with their 2 microlot positions. They cannot have individual price feeds for each and every trader (although spreads may well be a different matter, but even that is a somewhat limited “weapon”)
But my point was that any industry that survives purely on the failure of its customers and has to seek a constant supply of fresh meat is somehow grotesque and pointless. But a retail broker does not have to function like that. It is their job now to develop into something that has add-on value for both broker and trader - and that is possible…isn’t it? 