The Various Tribes Have Chosen The Platform They Will Defend (FB; TWTR; GOOG; AMZN)

Speaking of FT Alphaville's Ms. Kelly, (the post immediately below) she wrote a piece that was published on January 14 that is worthy of some cogitatin' time.

Is Facebook’s status as the bête noire of political advertising justified?

Facebook has started 2020 — the year in which America will decide who its next president will be — on a controversial note. On Thursday, the social media giant said it would continue to allow political ads on its platforms, without fact-checking them, and also that it would not ban ads that are aimed at and shown to only certain groups of the electorate — so-called “microtargeting”.
From the New York Times, under the headline “Facebook Says It Won’t Back Down From Allowing Lies in Political Ads”:

Defying pressure from Congress, Facebook on Thursday said that it would continue to allow campaigns to use the site to target advertisements to particular slices of the electorate and that it would not police the truthfulness of the messages that they send out.

Facebook’s announcement (in which it also said, though this bit was not so widely reported on, that users would now be able to see fewer political ads if they wish, and that it would make its “ad library” easier to search) has provoked an outcry.

Renowned Facebook critic and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr said Mark Zuckerberg had “taken his orders from Trump” in sanctioning “the delivery of toxic lies to voters in darkness”, while Bill Russo, campaign spokesman for Democratic hopeful Joe Biden, said it was “more window dressing around (Facebook’s) decision to allow paid misinformation”.

The announcement has also provoked a number of comparisons to other big tech companies — in particular Twitter, which banned all political advertising last year, and Google, which imposed some restrictions on political ads and has barred microtargeted ads.
The New York Times, for example, said:

The stance put Facebook, which is the most important digital platform for political ads, at odds with some of the other large tech companies, which have begun to put new limits on political ads . . .

....MUCH MORE

Seriously good stuff.

And although the trend toward politics-as-spectator-sport that has intensified over the last 5 - 10 years is probably not good for democracy it does provide a handy framework for folks to confirm their priors and hang their prejudices on.
One example that I've observed after reading the piece above is how people, whether left or right, will tend to attack the platform they perceive as most effective for the other 'side'.
And come up with all manner of argument and justification for their chosen position.