A Los Angeles jury recently found that Meta and YouTube deliberately created addictive products to harm children. The trial, which was watched closely by Jeffrey Stephen Wigand, a biochemist who acted as a whistleblower in the tobacco industry's landmark trials in the 1990s. To him, the social media trial seemed eerily familiar, sharing parallels with the trials faced by the tobacco companies who targeted children in the 1990s to use their products.
In an interview with The Guardian, Wigand said his first thought when he learned about the trial in California was that social media companies were using their advertisements were trying to get children addicted, much like the big tobacco companies he exposed.
“I looked at these social media companies and how they target their ads. They’re meant for adolescents. That was clearly in their own documents,” the big tobacco whistleblower said in the interview.
He said that both tobacco and social media companies "intentionally addicted" children “so they could use them as cashflow.”
Jeffrey Stephen Wigand, who was hired in 1989 by tobacco company Brown & Williamson (B&W) to develop a safer cigarette, recounted his days at the firm where he was dismissed for flagging carcinogenic ingredients in cigarettes.
He said that just like these tobacco companies, social media companies knew that their platforms were addictive.
“Social media companies knew it was addictive. They knew they had to create a...
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