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.
