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Comment by stanleykm | Hacker News Reader

We have evidence for this in other companies too. Oil & Gas and Tobacco companies are top of mind.

Don’t forget the All-Fats-Are-Bad sugar scam.

Petrochemical, Dow & Industrial Big Chem, Pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, finance companies, Monsanto, mining companies.

I mean, let's be real. That's really isn't a big company that achieves scale that doesn't have skeletons in the closet. Period.

It's a well worn playbook by now. But Meta seems to be the only one where we now have proof of internal research being scuttled for showing the inconvenient truth.

True, but there haven't even been publicly known internal research attempts at for example YouTube/Google about the content they are pushing and probably more importantly the ads they keep pushing into people's faces. I bet FB/Meta are kicking themselves now, for even running such internal research in the first place.

My point is, that all of these big tech giants will find, that they are a harmful cancer to society, at least in parts. Which is probably why they don't even "research" it. This way they can continue to act oblivious to this fact.

> I bet FB/Meta are kicking themselves now, for even running such internal research in the first place.

100%. This is what people miss in this thread when they're talking about seeing to punish companies who knowingly harm society. All that is going to do is discourage companies from ever seeking to evaluate the effects that they're having.

Then internal evaluation must be made mandatory. This is something that can be regulated, there just isn't the will for it.

Won't the absence of punishing companies that knowingly harm society in a way encourage more of the same conduct? What's your suggestion?

The tobacco industry also did that, but in many ways it also seems different, because where tobacco was something that has existed for millennia and was a scourge introduced to the world by the tribes of the “new world”; Facebook was a primary player in creating the whole social media space, something that effectively did not exist in the predatory and malignant manner that it was used for to create a digital panopticon, or more accurately and way worse, where your participation is required for a certain kind of success.

Social media is abusive and utterly psychotic and narcissistic, because that is the type of people who created it using basic psychological abuse and submission tactics. Banks, casinos, games, hollywood/TV, news/politics, social media, contemporary academia and religion, etc.; they all function on being endorphin dealers/dispensers.

Chemical companies also are on this list (PFAs).

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/05/425451/makers-pfas-forever...

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