There are two aspect to this, the message to the company and the message to the users: Yes, the fines are small enough that they are normalized by the violatin

There are two aspect to this, the message to the company and the message to the users: Yes, the fines are small enough that they are normalized by the violating corporate as just as small additional cost of doing business. A dramatic negative externality gets trivialized. The signal to other corporates is: go ahead feasting on the corpse of user privacy, just do a proper cost-benefit analysis. But, these fines are legal events, in jurisdictions that are relevant to large numbers of people. The common argument "people don't care about privacy" is more truthfully "people assume that widely popular online businesses are legal and ok, since services that are not ok are generally not allowed to operate". In fact, when all sort of public institutions are actually on facebook (and other adtech platforms) and even encourage people to join and interact there, they actually endorse that implied legal status. This has been a fiasco that has cut to size any "proud" democracy out there. News headlines of legal fines help puncture that implied institutional endorsement. The average user doesn't know that the fine is just 12 hours of revenue. They actually have no clue what sort of lucrative business is running behind their backs and against their interests. Using these legal events, provided they get some press, does help the argument of those pushing to use (where available) privacy-respecting alternatives. Of course such is the ability of the public to get desensitized to any uncomfortable truths that eventually that effect will wear out too.