It’s true that small businesses generally depend on advertising. In recent years, because of the overwhelming popularity of social media, and Facebook’s monopoly in that space, that’s meant that many small businesses depend on Facebook. But it doesn’t have to be that way—small businesses would still find other places to advertise in targeted ways even if Facebook didn’t exist, let alone if its targeting and tracking features were fully deprecated. Consider the statistics Facebook presented in its ads. What does the fact that 44 percent of small businesses increased advertising during the pandemic effectively mean? Only that, …
