Dammed if they do, dammed if they don’t: the social media paradox brands find themselves in post the Meta ruling.
By Tom Ridges, CEO and Founder, Herdify
Most people would agree that rewarding a child for bad behaviour doesn’t encourage them to change. If anything, it just teaches them that bad behaviour gets rewarded.
Yet, that’s what’s happening with social media platforms. The recent legal ruling against Meta, which proved the platform harms children’s mental health, adds another uncomfortable layer to the problem, but with no admission of guilt and ad revenues continuing to pour in, the bad behaviour is being rewarded.
It would be easy to lay the blame at the door of the brands who advertise on these platforms, but I think that’s a lazy, reductive argument that masks the difficult space marketing leaders are in.
Most leaders I speak to behind closed doors feel uncomfortable funding these platforms, but if they take a stand, they will not take them down; their brand will suffer, followed shortly by their job.
The status quo stays intact. Platforms pay fines, brands keep spending, and the cycle continues. And yes, social media gives brands huge reach, but it’s not the only way to get it.
Social contagion
All the biggest brands have used network effects to grow. Most people think network effects are a ‘tech thing’, but they’re not; they’re basic human behaviour.
Ordinary people influence the people around them every single day. What one person buys, watches, wears or recommends directly shapes what somebody else does next. Whether it’s a friend recommending a restaurant, a neighbour sharing a recipe or parents chatting at the school gates, real-world social influence is happening all around us.
Individually, these moments seem small and hard for CMOs to track and measure. But if a brand can tap into the real-world, something remarkable happens. You turn everyday people into your brand advocates. And unlike paid social, you don’t have to pay a platform for the privilege.
So, how can brands do it?
Right conversations over demographics
Traditional targeting focuses on demographics, age, postcode, income. But this misses a simple truth: people don’t make decisions in isolation. Their behaviour is shaped by the people around them and the communities they belong to.
When a brand finds where those local advocacy hotspots are already happening, it finds a far more reliable path to growth. Rather than focusing only on who your customer is, modern marketers should be equally focused on who is influencing them.
That distinction changes how you spend your budget, as you might find that tapping into human connection and offline experiences through real-life events could be a great alternative. Where people connect matters as much as who they are.
More importantly, unlike paid social, real-world advocacy doesn’t force you to choose between dashboard hits and your own values. It gives you a way to build both.
The alternative isn’t another platform
Shifting budget from one social giant to another after every new scandal isn’t a growth strategy; it’s a game of whack-a-mole.
The more interesting play? Building growth that doesn’t rely on social platforms at all.
Most marketing data tells you who your target demographic is, but almost none of it tells you who’s talking about your brand over a Sunday roast. The opportunity is to find these communities, build genuine relationships within them, and use technology to replicate that model from one place to the next, rather than relying on social platforms to reach everyone at once.
The most powerful networks don’t just live on a screen. They’re on high streets, in workplaces, social groups, and across local communities. They might give media planners a few new questions to answer, but because they’re built on real human trust, they offer a far safer route forward.
And perhaps this is where the future of marketing gets really interesting.
In five years, we’re going to see the rise of local-first brands with global aspirations driven by people who don’t want to fund social platforms. The next generation of brands could be built locally first, using technology to scale from one community to the next, rather than trying to reach everyone at mass scale. This is especially as consumers become more selective on social media, with research finding that a proportion of UK social-media users who actively post, share, or comment fell from 61% to 49% between 2024 and 2026. This shows a growing urge for more authentic and in-person connections.
That doesn’t mean the end of social media. It means separating reach from actual offline influence. The internet lets brands reach almost anyone, but that doesn’t mean everyone is the audience they need.
As consumers value real-world experiences more, the brands that win won’t be the ones funding the next big social platform. They’ll be the ones that realise they don’t need one.
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