I decided very early in my career that I would never work for a place that sells ads. Don't think I could sleep at night if I worked at a place like Meta or Google.
I've thought about this because it's true for most every place I worked, we just funnel money into Google & Meta's coffers and play the SEO and social hacks game just like everyone else.
could your business simply make less money? could you find other ways to achieve your business goals? could you put in more work for lesser results?
these are the same choices you're asking others to make about their employment
If you have a visual arts business you are more-or-less required to have an Instagram account, and maybe even advertise on it. It's where your customers and business partners are and if you want to participate in that space, you're handicapping yourself so severely by not being there that you're probably putting your business's existence at risk. It's a similar story for online businesses with Google ads and SEO, and so on. There's shades of grey in how much one decides to do business with these companies, sure, but it's pretty much unavoidable, because of how these companies worked to create & maintain their monopolies.
That's not similar to choosing to work at those companies. There are zillions of jobs out there aside from working at one of the six most evil companies in the country. No one is choosing Google or Meta as their only option. Anyone working at Meta or Google is doing so by choice.
the effectiveness of online ad targeting enables a lot more businesses to be profitable, this is indisputable
it is still a choice to say "I need to run a visual art business that makes $X" as much as it is to say "I need to be a software engineer that makes $Y"
giving Meta money is the easiest option, of course
if you feel you can't achieve your goals without giving Meta money, that's fine, but maybe don't judge those who feel they can't achieve their goals without working for Meta