In the public eye, Meta is particularly unethical. It's a large part of their current downfall. So I don't agree with you that it is a disingenuous point.
facebook tried to provide equal and fair (market driven) access to political influence through their ad-platform; and they will be punished for doing so (see the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and subsequent relentless waves of bad PR against them).
political influence is not open, nor fair, nor market driven. is power driven; and the power is trying to re-assert this harsh truth.
and when I say "the power" I refer to the powerful people and their institutions who can make a political example a lá Julian Assange; the kinds of institutions and secretive traditional societies who can make somebody commit "suicide" in a federal prison; or get somebody in a presidential seat. facebook is in for a rough ride.
powers who would ally with china in secret "in order to better all of society".
powers whose only competence is keeping power, but not making power nor doing anything good with it. powerful institutions (of autonomous self-maximizing money) who know war, and war is what they will use their power for (and whence their power comes).
in another point in history I would be meeting some assassins pretty soon for daring to publish this in a semi-public forum. now all I get is dissuaded ("You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.") and buried in with the noise/spam and the garbage ([shadow]banned).
the "FB as virtues" is an insight I glimpsed through Stratechery's analysis of Facebook's woes [1].
> All news sources are competing on an equal footing; those controlled or bought by a party are not inherently privileged.
> The likelihood any particular message will “break out” is based not on who is propagating said message but on how many users are receptive to hearing it. The power has shifted from the supply side to the demand side.
> on Facebook both small companies and large companies have an equal shot at customers, and both Party insiders and complete outsiders have an equal shot at voters.
so then, apparently democracy is good, justice is good, but everything is better in moderation, including these 'good' things.
the algorithmically driven market made all participants far more equal than they wanted to be; so they decided to destroy it.
In the public eye, Meta is particularly unethical. It's a large part of their current downfall. So I don't agree with you that it is a disingenuous point.