"Facebook won't change its policies on fact-checking ads promoted by politicians or limit political campaigns' microtargeting abilities, the company said Wednesday."

"Instead, Facebook announced that it will expand transparency around political ads and give its users more control over the ads they see. The decision comes after the company endured more than three months of criticism from Democratic politicians and activists over its decision not to fact-check ads from political campaigns. In that time, Twitter banned political ads altogether, while Google announced changes to how ads can be microtargeted to users.... Facebook's decision to keep its microtargeting policy was in part a response to campaigns and other political groups that told Facebook that they rely on microtargeting to reach audiences they would not have access to without social media platforms like Facebook...."

NBC News reports.

Word that does not appear in the article: "Trump."

Let me go back to that WaPo article I skipped. It's heavy on the Trump: "Facebook executive says company was responsible for Trump’s victory but warns against policy changes":

Longtime Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth said in a blunt internal post that the company’s advertising tools were crucial to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and may help him win again but that executives must resist the temptation to make policy changes that would alter the course of legitimate political debate.....
Bosworth dismissed the idea that Russian efforts to manipulate U.S. voters over Facebook... were crucial to Trump’s victory. Bosworth... also played down the importance of the use of Facebook data by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica....

Rather, said Bosworth... President Trump “got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.” Bosworth... particularly praised Trump’s leading digital-advertising adviser in 2016, Brad Parscale, who is now managing Trump’s reelection campaign....

“Parscale and Trump just did unbelievable work,” Bosworth wrote in his post. “They weren’t running misinformation or hoaxes. They weren’t microtargeting or saying different things to different people. They just used the tools we had to show the right creative to each person. The use of custom audiences, video, ecommerce, and fresh creative remains the high water mark of digital ad campaigns in my opinion.”
That comment and some others puzzled some who read the post. The term “microtargeting” is often understood to include the company’s powerful Custom Audiences tool, which Trump used and allows advertisers to identify targets by a wide range of factors — location, age, income, interests, education or even visits to a certain website or Facebook page....

So the point is that Facebook is offering great tools, and it should want to keep offering them and pushing other candidates to use the tools well, which is what Trump did. Obviously, Facebook wants to make money, so it's not going to want to give up what it is selling, and it's in its interest to say that Trump did not abuse these tools, that there's nothing wrong with the tools, and the Democrats ought to give up their effort to stop Facebook from selling its product and step up their buying of the product.

The message from Facebook to Democrats is: 1. Don't criticize us, criticize yourselves, and 2. Stop worrying about what Trump did wrong, start copying what he did right.