I was in the social media team of one of the Democratic presidential candidates. I agree with you.

It's my belief that if you want to give a chance to lesser known candidates who are not backed by millionaires and powerful insiders, Facebook was the last option available.

I believe Facebook was one of the last services available to make our democracy more democratic.

I think this move by Facebook will make it so much harder for smaller candidates to have a chance now.

I know there is this perception that without Facebook ads Trump would have not won. I don't believe that at all.

I think Trump won first because of NBC and then because of CNN, ABC, etc. than because of any Facebook ads. Allow me to explain:

A - It was NBC that gave Trump years of national TV exposure and created this myth of this business mogul and business guru with his TV show the Apprentice. So people believed "Make America Great Again" was possible.

B - Trump got about $5billion in free media [0]. Because Trump and all his statements captured so much interests.

C - In 2016 election, about 8.5 million people who voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump and about 2.5 million of 2012 Romney voters voted for Hillary [1].

These 8.5 million 2012 Obama voters may or may not have been Fox viewers and as likely watched CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, local news (which are all affiliated).

Did you know the Democratic party will cancel working with you as an agency or entity if you work with any candidates that challenge any incumbents? [2]. Basically if you are a professional or entity doing email campaigns or other work and if you work for any non-incumbent you're basically gone and blacklisted. Are we okay with this? Facebook made it so easy for much smaller candidates with little resources to challenge the incumbents. Now this path is gone.

BTW, in the past 4 years or so Republicans have invested and built this enormousness voter database with email, sms and phone number targeting. I've seen screenshots of it. There are other entity who have built something similar at the DNC or will offer one to the Democrats at the right price. There is so much data out there outside of Facebook to target you.

If a candidate has the budget and all the resources he/she/they don't need facebook to get that kind of targeting.

I had the opportunity to evaluate various vendors and their pitches. What's available now out there outside of facebook is rather scary. Any candidate with large budget can target the audience they want it's the smaller ones who will be eliminated by this change.

Lastly, Trump won because of the message. Trump actually ran economically on the left of Hillary and socially on her right.

The kind of stuff like union jobs/workers protection, which used to be the platform of Democrats is what Trump ran on. Everyone talked about the wall, and racism. But many Americans who have been gradually marginalized and seeing every product that used to be made in USA was now coming from China and blaming their jobs lost to Mexico because of NAFTA wanted to hear Trump's message. I know for us in the Bay Area or in NY, this doesn't matter, but I believe it's because we are out of touch with the rest of the country. This is why I had predicted Trump win during GOP primary and his national win. I spoke with random people in various parts of the country. Once they felt comfortable with you, they had a positive view of Trump and how he would somehow come and rescue them. He fooled them, but the message resonated and Trump got $5 billion in free media coverage. That's why he won, because of the places like NBC, CNN, FOX, etc.

You can talk about the small narrow of victory by which Trump won places like Michigan and if Facebook wasn't there he would have not won. I'm not sure about that at all. I think this facebook narrative distracts from the bigger picture, which Trump won on the message that years ago was part of the Democratic platform and he got his message across for free using the mainstream media.

[0] https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billi...

[1] http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/just-how-m...

[2] https://theintercept.com/2019/03/22/house-democratic-leaders...