In a world with less perverse incentives these people whose education was largely funded by tax payers would be working on actual valuable projects rather than optimizing how to get people to click more ads for a private corporation.

Nobody says it's a bad thing (licensing traps aside, if any, which I didn't check). It just should be noted that when big corps/celebrities get struck by bad publicity they must react with some good move as a lever to counteract the negative press. I'm not saying they wouldn't have done this, but it's a very common move among politicians, corporations, celebrities etc. Their PR office is just doing their work.