Publish And Be Damned
31 March 2026
Last week two court cases in the US went against the social media platforms. The first, in New Mexico found META guilty of misleading users over the safety of its platforms for children. The second, in Los Angeles found META and YouTube guilty of building addictive social media platforms that harm children’s mental health.
There’s no doubt these are significant judgements, not because of the fines levied (US$375m and US$6m, small change for the companies involved) but for the creation of precedent. Presumably there’s a long queue of complainants forming.
The question is not around the significance, but what comes next.
There is one safe bet. META, and Google will appeal. The appeal(s) will last years. Who knows what the final outcome will be, but we are talking about two of the wealthiest organisations on the planet, who have the backing of the current US administration.
Bob Hoffman, in his Newsletter ‘Ethics in Advertising and Other Fairy Tales’ makes the point that the court cases led to a lot of posts unloading on the platforms. “Much venom was spilled in the direction of Zuckerberg and his tech billionaire friends.”
Bob, like me is not on these guys’ Christmas card lists. But he is right (as usual) in pointing out that META is over 95% funded by advertising, and yet those who pay for this stuff never seem to get any of the blame when these examples of antisocial behaviour surface.
I had the opportunity to sit down last week with Bob, courtesy of Mike Sainsbury and his asiCast podcast.
I don’t intend turning this into a transcript, but whilst Bob and I largely agree, he is more pessimistic than me. I may not be a little ray of sunshine where this topic is concerned but I do think these court cases are a cause for some limited optimism.
On their own, these and any subsequent cases won’t cause META (in particular, I see them as the worst offenders) to change course.
As Bob’s Newsletter reminds us, in 2020 marketers instituted a boycott against Facebook. The boycott was led by P&G, whose Chief Brand Officer, Marc Pritchard spoke to MediaPost just before this week’s ANA Conference. His topic? A Call for Reinvention. The boycott episode doesn’t warrant a mention.
Mark Zuckerberg’s response to the boycott: “…all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough … We’re not gonna change our policies or approach.” He was correct.
Brand pressure doesn’t work, Facebook’s ad revenue is so widely spread even the biggest have no leverage. So why the optimism?
The legal cases didn’t focus on stories but on technical behaviours. META was not found guilty of posting harmful materials but of creating an unsafe / addictive product.
Thus, these cases circumnavigated Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the one that establishes platforms as platforms, not publishers.
The results of the two court cases have created news stories around the bad practices of the platforms.
Put these together with specific cases, like the Molly Russell affair highlighted by Channel 4’s film ‘Molly Versus The Machines’ and you have a narrative shift.
Maybe a small one, maybe a temporary one, but a narrative shift for sure.
What was a lot of mumbling from within the media community, fuelled by stories like Sarah Wynn-Williams’ book ‘Careless People’ detailing her time at Facebook, has now bled over into stories noticed by real people.
A parallel from another era might be the rise and fall of ‘The News of the World’.
For years this paper thrived on scandal, gossip and rumour, much of it sourced via the hacking of phones. This didn’t bother its many readers, or its advertisers unduly. The people involved tended to be celebrities and royalty; the first group enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the tabloid press – they each needed the other – the second group never answered back.
But then came the Milly Dowler case. Milly was murdered in 2002; in 2011 came the revelation that NoW journalists had hacked her phone after she had been reported missing, giving her parents false hope that she was alive.
This was a step too far, the resulting public outcry along with the withdrawal of several key advertisers led to Rupert Murdoch closing the paper, and to the Cameron government commissioning the Leveson enquiry.
Different times, simpler times and clearly Facebook / META is of a different scale to the ‘News of the World’.
But there is one similarity. The public narrative can switch, quickly. It isn’t a huge leap from ‘they connect people’ to ‘they harm teens’.
Court cases, and appeals keep the topic centre stage.
Public dialogue is fickle and influences brand owners. Today’s inconsequential gossip can become tomorrow’s major policy shift.