March 29, 2026
ETHICS IN ADVERTISING & OTHER FAIRY TALES
In 2020 marketers instituted a boycott against Facebook because of its publishing practices. Mark Zuckerberg told his staff, "...all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough...We’re not gonna change our policies or approach..." He was right.
This week the guilty verdicts against Meta, Google et al in the New Mexico and LA court cases exploded in the news and gave a lot of people the opportunity to unload on the platforms. Much venom was spilled in the direction of Zuckerberg and his tech billionaire friends.
While I have nothing but contempt for the creeps that run the social media publishing industry, I can't find an acceptable answer to this question:
"Why aren't the puppet masters at least as guilty as the puppets?"
We - the advertising and marketing industry - are the bank. We are funding all of the harm the social media industry is doing to kids. Meta gets over 97% of its revenue from advertising. Every horrifying thing they are doing, we are funding:
- Exposure to dangerously inappropriate content? We're funding it.
- Mental health harm? We're funding it.
- Online addiction & attention damage? We're funding it.
- Cyberbullying & social cruelty? We're funding it.
- Sexual exploitation & grooming? We're funding it.
- Distorted identity & body image issues? We're funding it.
- Disturbing porn finding its way to pre-teens? We're funding it.
- Political & ideological radicalization? We're funding it.
- Gross manipulation by 'influencers'? We're funding it.
We are the one-and-only reason for all this dirty work. The platforms want our ad dollars. And the more the platforms deliver what we want, the more money we feed them.
We have been hiding behind the skirts of the online platforms for years and pretending we have no part in it. It's all a lie. It's a giant lie. It is organized crime on a global scale.
And we are financing it.
The "Tobacco Moment?" Not So Fast.
The cliche of the week has been that the social media platforms' courtroom losses were their "tobacco moment" - the moment that society would wake up and end their reign of terror.
Count me as officially skeptical. Here are five reasons I'm skeptical:
- Follow the money. Tobacco earned its money from the public. The public cares about its health. That's why the public abandoned tobacco. The social media industry earn their money from the advertising industry. As noted above, the advertising industry doesn't give a flying shit about public health. Consequently we will not abandon the social media industry. We will continue to finance them.
- Meta and Google have more corporate lawyers than Brooklyn has tattooed baristas. They will never give up. The LA loss cost them $6,000,000 in fines and damages. Based on Meta's market cap, I have calculated that they have enough money to lose a case like this every day for the next 500 years and still have billions left.
- Meta and Google have circumvented the courts for years. They will continue to do so. They make a big fuss about the 'unfairness' of the cases they lose. But behind closed doors they giggle at the pitiful fines and damages they are asked to pay.
- Despite the fact that there are thousands of pending cases against social media platforms, both the LA and New Mexico court cases were not fought over the appalling content these platforms publish, but over side issues like mental health and public safety. These are not easy cases to prove. The terrible content the platforms are publishing is protected by the dreadful 1996 Decency in Media Act (Section 230.) This is something that must change.
- This is a photo of the full complement of creeps at Table 1 at Trump's Inauguration. They've paid their protection money.
