Meta has normalized child exploitation scandals so thoroughly that the marketing industry no longer reacts to them

Adweek columnist Mark Ritson argues that two jury verdicts against Meta in the span of two days last month — one in New Mexico finding the company violated consumer protection laws and endangered children, ordering $375M in damages, and one in Los Angeles finding Meta liable for a young woman's depression and anxiety — were met with complete silence from the marketing industry, with not a single budget pulled or agency statement issued. Ritson traces Meta's pattern of surviving scandals intact through Cambridge Analytica, the Facebook Papers, a $5B FTC fine, a €1.2B GDPR penalty, and revelations that roughly $16B of its annual ad revenue comes from scam ads, arguing that each scandal that passed without consequence made the next one easier to ignore. The deeper issue, Ritson writes, is that Meta has become so structurally embedded in media plans that CMOs no longer experience spending there as a moral choice at all.