> Facebook (as it’s the most used example) being blocked in a country or region (EU for example) would be devastating thousands/tens of thousands of businesses.

You've stated this as a fact but small businesses thrived before Facebook, so I think it's fair to assume they'll thrive after Facebook is long gone, absent other evidence.

The only type of business I genuinely see suffering are those who advertise crap dropshipped from Alibaba that nobody is looking for organically, sold at 2000% markups, and that would be a good riddance.

> You've stated this as a fact but small businesses thrived before Facebook, so I think it's fair to assume they'll thrive after Facebook is long gone, absent other evidence.

The unit economics have totally changed though as there are many more businesses that exist now that simply could not have done in the old model.

The previous company I started was a direct to consumer UK heating product. In the old world we would have had to go through big shed retailers and lost 50-60% margin with 90 to 180 day payment terms and would have had to stock all of their stores from day one. The expense would have stopped that business from ever being started.

With digital platform advertising we could specifically reach our target demographic, loose only 20% margin to customer acquisition and postage costs (so afford to start with smaller manufacturing runs), get paid the day we sold the unit so cash flow positive, hold much less stock and order from our suppliers in response to demand and run our own just in time factory.

The business was much smaller that it would have had to be in the previous world, much less risky and, frankly, only viable thanks to very targeted advertising that allowed us to tell our potential customers about our product when they most needed it.

In this kind of discussion people seem to assume the product spectrum is binary. It's either useful and so would thrive regardless of advertising or useless tat that only exists thanks to digital platform marketing.

That just isn't the case, sure - those ends of the spectrum exist but there is a vast array of businesses in the middle that could not have existing in the old world and aren't useless drop shipped tat.

It's going to sound harsh, but if a business is solely reliant on a single partner to not get fucked over, then that business has a far greater issue and it's failure will be entirely on them.

Putting your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

That aside, in practice the main people who benefit from GAFAM ads are Alibaba/AliExpress dropship sellers in my experience. Just take a generic piece of product, slap your own label on it and that's a new listing. Had to buy a PC keyboard recently and the search results are just littered with that crap. I don't think you'll find many people shed tears for that crap going bankrupt, it just clogs out actual legit small businesses.

> but if a business is solely reliant on a single partner to not get fucked over, then that business has a far greater issue and it's failure will be entirely on them.

You're totally right but that's the reality for many small businesses. One big route to market props up the whole business.

> are Alibaba/AliExpress dropship sellers in my experience

Possibly making an unfair assumption but I suspect your experience is quite limited then. I know many very legit web first businesses with great products, developed in house or a proper license importers of great products who rely extensively on the GAFAM ad complex.