From their own internal metrics, tech giants have long known what independent research now continuously validates: that the content that is most likely to go viral is that which induces strong feelings such as outrage and disgust, regardless of its underlying veracity. Moreover, they also know that such content is heavily engaged with and most profitable. Far from acting against false, harmful content, they placed profits above its staggering—and damaging—social impact to implicitly encourage it while downplaying the massive costs.
Social media titans embrace essentially the same hypocrisy the tobacco industry embodied when they feigned concern over harm reduction while covertly pushing their product ever more aggressively. With the reelection of Trump, our tech giants now no longer even pretend to care.
Engagement is their business model, and doubt about the harms they cause is their product. Tobacco executives, and their bought-off scientists, once proclaimed uncertainty over links between cigarettes and lung cancer. Zuckerberg has likewise testified to Congress, “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health, ” even while studies find self-harm, eating disorder and misogynistic material spreads on these platform unimpeded. This equivocation echoes protestations of tobacco companies that there was no causal evidence of smoking harms, even as incontrovertible evidence to the contrary rapidly amassed.
Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams says company targeted ads at teens based on their ‘emotional state’
[…] She said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time.
[…]
Have we collectively forgotten that Facebook tested manipulating users emotional states all the way back in 2014.
Where they tested to see if people with depression can be even more depressed if their social media feeds are manipulated to take away positive interaction.
They are the asbestos of the internet.
asbestos at least was the best option until a couple years ago for numerous applications.
It probably still is. It’s a miracle material. It’s a real shame that it’s so toxic.
Thank You for Posting (2025)
Great callback. I haven’t thought of Thank You For Smoking in ages.
That is a prescient little film from my teenage years back in earlly 00’s. The film was a nice stab at the culture of “spin” and how lobbying was gonna dig us into the hell we are now.
Hmmm, Thank You For Posting would be an actual relevant sequel in the time of endless sequels. Backdropping it with the lobbying for the Turd Reich and the ascension of Fascism and you got something there…
Thank you for reminding me of Thank You For Smoking.
20 years ago, as well
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ok but like if I don’t have music and noise cancelling earbuds I will explode
I got an e-ink e-reader in the pocketable form factor of a phone (Bigme Hibreak Color). Instead of doomscrolling social media, I read a couple paragraphs of the Oppenheimer biography. Next I’ll reread Neuromancer. It’s life-changing. 10/10 highly recommended.
Cool! What made you chose that over something like the boox that is the same form factor but without phone functionality?
Color screen and the fact that Onyx, the makers of Boox, flagrantly violate GPL terms.
But it was the Boox Palma getting publicity that made me aware of the form factor and start digging. I’m super happy with the Bigme Hibreak, but I don’t have a SIM card in it. I mostly use it in airplane mode as a dumb e-reader and don’t even install any apps besides the minimum needed to do that.
i’m curious, what exactly is the advantage of getting a dumbphone vs just uninstalling social media apps from your existing phone, or just disabling internet access all together? doesn’t that achieve pretty much the same thing while still being able to keep things like navigation and being able to see when public transport is delayed
It’s like quitting cold turkey - removes the temptation to use these apps.
I would liken them to the automotive industry. Both have deeply harmed society by isolating people from each other (it sounds counterintuitive, I know). Both have created infrastructure that prioritizes individual consumption over collective well being, restructured daily life around corporate products, and normalized a form of privatized existence that erodes public space, shared culture, and relational life. Just as cars gutted walkable communities and made human scale living subordinate to machines, Big Tech has gutted organic social interaction, subordinating communication and attention to platforms designed for extraction and control. #fuckcars #fuckbigtech
Don’t forget the cycle of buying up all patents and shelving them if they are a threat to their goals. What a future we’ve wasted.
Reminds me of a part I’ve recently read on The Dawn of Everything, comparing the Great Lakes natives’ freedoms to our corporate owned “freedoms”: while we’re busy with the “possibility of freedom”, they cared about the exercise of their freedoms.
Before the colonization, they were free to visit other places because they almost always had someone that belonged to their clan living there and who would receive them with open arms. They didn’t have to pay anything for the travel proper, but obviously needed to take some supplies to spend the days on the wilderness. For us, if we don’t have money, we don’t have freedoms: gotta pay for the car+gas (or plane or ship ticket), food, housing.
Cave men said the same thing about the horse. They gutted our communal caves and made human scale subordinate to a domesticated animal. #fuckmounts
Y’all, one of the far-reaching Broligarchy ideas they’re hoping emerges from the ashes of the United States is the DAO, decentralized autonomous organization.
Every action in the block chain. They facilitate, and are predicated on, the idea of treating every aspect of life as a social network. Everything you do is recorded. So daily life ends up incentived toward constant, persistent, corralled engagement. The Network State is the term.
The difference is that you can’t build a society on the mechanics of the tobacco industry. But you can on a human reaction industry.
Wait. If tobacco companies do not exist anymore, then who are making cigarettes?
Or do they mean that Meta, X and Google are producing cigarettes like tobacco companies are doing right now, like with filters or that they are putting warning labels on their products? Because I haven’t seen any warning labels or Google cigarettes.
The title is very confusing.
Although I do think Google, X and Meta should have at least 75% of their banner state their platforms are brainrot and spreads misinformation. You know, like modern day tobacco companies have to warn for the risks of using their junk.
Except, you know, tobacco companies are modern day tobacco companies. They were never defeated.
it’s an analogy; the author is drawing parallels between them. Obviously Tobacco companies were not “defeated” but they were regulated to hell, and I’m sure the author would say that’s what we need to do with social media too.
Yeah, it’s crazy how many commenters here are completely missing the point. I should really stop assuming people have any sort of intelligence.
The flaw in the analogy is that it assumes that those effects are limited to some companies when in reality every single company that existed in history has behaved this way if they weren’t stopped by regulation.
Most companies aren’t peddling a toxic product like cigarettes (or social media).
But they are peddling a toxic behaviour of unnecessary and uninhibited consumption.
Unless society as a whole is ready to move beyond capitalism that won’t change.
The flaw in the analogy is that it assumes that those effects are limited to some companies
no it doesn’t.
Muted in the English world. I argue junk food commercials draw a lot of parallels with cigarette commercials of the past. For some reason obesity isn’t worth prevention so the advertisements are pretty gross.
Soft drinks. Coca Cola especially really loves to tie emotions and sports/holidays to sugar water.
Muted in the English world.
I don’t know think you’ve been to Europe much… Just a guess
They were never defeated.
When you say “defeated”, what exactly do you mean? You mean that they should cease to exist to be considered as such? If that’s the case then I would say it’s an unrealistic expectation.
I would say that they’ve been largely contained. If I remember correctly, back in the '50s almost half of the American population used to smoke. The percentage of people smoking has been consistently decreasing over the years thanks to regulation and increased taxation. Tobacco companies are definetly not as influential as they once were.
How many vape, which is more harmful, more addictive?
How is it more harmful?
That article makes it clear it is less harmful.
Vape if you want.
I’ve been telling this to family and friends, apparently they didn’t want to agree. At least there is article now. I do think current social media will be looked at in future like tobacco/smoking is currently looked at.
The evil tobacco company is an outdated narrative. They were already regulated to hell 22 years ago when I started smoking and since then I’ve only ever seen the regulations increase now with the new apparent goal of outlawing nicotine. I can only speculate that people think this time we’re going to get prohibition right.
btw I quit smoking 7 years ago, and nicotine altogether 5 years ago.
If anything the oil companies are the most evil. They knew climate change was going to happen 50+ years ago.
It’s illegal to grow your own tobacco in more states now than it is to grow you own cannabis
considering that tobacco companies are still here, it’s kind of a weird title
