Honest question -- do you think that without Facebook there will be no tensions between anti-maskers and people who insist on wearing masks everywhere? Is FB really to blame here?
Yes. The progressives were fighting against the mask mandate imposed by the lynching-friendly Republican mayor of SF. They were saying that mask mandates are unscientific, and turned out to be right:
> A study then in 1919 concluded that mandatory mask mandates did not make any difference on epidemic
Without Facebook and the self-amplifying validation bubbles it produces, being "anti-mask" would be seen as just as ridiculous as being an anti-vaccine or a flat-earther. There wouldn't be tensions at all because the fringe group wouldn't have any other way to grow to the point where there could be "tensions".
I think it’s a huge amplifier of what would otherwise be fringe ideas.
In the absence of FB, there would be tensions, but no battleground.