Cigarettes and Facebook — History Repeats in Regulation

Remember when cigarettes were good for you? Remember when doctors prescribed smooth menthol cigarettes to treat common colds and throat infections? Remember when mothers were lighting up around their new born babies in the NICU?

I don’t. Because humanity came to its senses after generations of careful and malicious pro-smoking marketing. Humanity finally decided to trust science, and shunned an entire multibillion-dollar industry, because of the harm it brought to society. This happened with cigarettes and Big Tobacco late last century, and it feels like something similar is about to happen with Big Tech.

As recently as in 1994, the heads of the 7 Big Tobacco corporations lied to Congress, stating that nicotine was NOT addictive. Sounds familiar?

Every few decades, a highly disruptive and profitable industry is forced to lock horns with governments all over the world. In the early and mid 1900s it was Big Oil corporations — corporations that had managed to monopolize massive reservoirs of oil and fossil fuels, giving them massive amounts of leverage over entire nation states and people. Oil corporations were so big and profitable, that some of them literally had licenses to disrupt entire nations and communities in the process of drilling for oil. (Ask Native Americans and other nations that have been ‘freed’ in the recent past). Profitability at that level is usually accompanied by a huge and effective political lobby, be it in the form of a Political Action Committee, or just a collection of carefully placed financial incentives for legislators. All in all, highly lucrative ‘too big to fail’ industries usually find a way to make their money, up until the people have had enough, and force their governments to regulate.

Everything mentioned above can be now equated to Big Tech, as it is now the biggest ‘industry’ on the planet. Big Tech and its largest corporations are undoubtedly some of the most lucrative companies in existence today, giving us flashbacks of the omniscient ‘cannot fail and will not fail’ power held by Big Tobacco back in the day.

His Highness Mark Zuckerberg getting his annual pasting from the US Senate, for literally doing the devil’s work.

Both Big Tech and Big Tobacco have eerie similarities in how they have interacted with society in general. Both Big Tobacco and Big Tech started out as harmless, innocuous additions to people’s social lives. Both are highly lucrative and profitable in nature, with massive consumer demographics right off the bat.

Perhaps the most evident parallel between the two, is the way they make their product more addictive to the user. Big Tobacco did this by jacking up the nicotine content in their cancer sticks, and hooked millions and millions of men, women and children to their product. In the same vein, Facebook just shows you content and news that is more likely to scare you and make you hate others. Both industries have cracked the code in making their product and service extremely attractive for average citizens, and even children.

Frances Haugen recently exposed Facebook’s ‘innocent’ habit of knowingly propagating hate and misinformation for more money.

Both Big Tech and Tobacco consist of corporate giants, with pockets that are seemingly endless. With all the money cigarette manufacturers accrued in the 1900s, they were able to influence and sometimes outright block certain regulations from being imposed on their business. Cigarette manufacturers even went to the extent of funding bogus and misleading research which tried to convince average people that smoking wasn’t the leading cause of preventable deaths on the planet. Big Tech does this too, by funding several research projects, seminars, programs, and anything else that could convince you they’re not really evil, only kinda morally bankrupt.

However, the most harrowing commonality between the two business giants, is willful ignorance in favor of higher profits. Philip Morris International, and several other cigarette manufacturers knew that their products caused cancer, and severe respiratory illnesses. Yet, the dollar signs in their eyes apparently convinced them to knowingly increase the nicotine content in their cigarettes, leaving millions of dead and millions more slowly dying.

Facebook cigarettes, the most addictive vice known to mankind.

Facebook shares this harrowing apathy to their users, as seen in Frances Haugen’s recent testimony and her confidential documents produced to the public. Facebook (and probably all other social media giants) sought to provide vulnerable users with content that would elicit strong and violent reactions, all in the name of greater engagement and advertising revenue. If not for the cute blue and white logo, one would think Facebook is almost exactly like a World War II era propaganda machine.

Concerned citizens seemed to have had enough of Big Tech’s chicanery, adding fuel to a slowly-growing global movement to finally regulate these tech giants. Big Tobacco crossed the line when they marketed and sold sticks that directly caused cancer. Big Tech had crossed the line right when their platforms were used to emotionally traumatize vulnerable teenagers, and undermine democracies all around the world.

From Cigarettes to Facebook, from Oil to Instagram, the age of Big Tech regulation is upon us.