It's now official, tech is the new tobacco

So has tech replaced oil and natural gas as the new tobacco, or do we have two new tobaccos right now? Oh, what about fast fashion? Recyclable plastics that aren't actually recyclable? Dodgy financial products remixed and hidden in your mutual funds? Unsafe tap water that passes all the city's tests but not at-home tests for the same contaminates? The Texas government being run by Republicans for decades who campaign on fixing the broken schools, roads, and taxes in Texas?

Does that mean that the cool kids on the schoolyard now use tech while wearing leather jackets to signal rebellion?

Is it finally the time for the nerds to shine?

Everything is the new tobacco when it comes to hiding their dangers. Tobacco showed that you could spend a relatively small amount of money and make billions for decades while kicking the can down the road.

> New court documents make clearer than ever that Meta has been working hard to control the scientific narrative on their products

...

> The resulting documents reveal:

    > Explicit plans by Meta to discredit psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has been raising alarms about social media and youth mental health. 

    > Frustration by internal researchers because Meta lawyers were stopping them from researching youth mental health and their platforms. (Why would lawyers stop these studies? Because they risk finding something. The researchers respond by asking "“if the study only included questions about social support/positive outcomes would legal approve?”)

    > Explicit plans to work with the National Academies of Sciences on social media and youth mental health with goals to “get credit” for proposing the assessment and “greatly shape the nature of the questions they will explore.”

    > Alternative plans to work with another group if they cannot adequately influence NAS research, and “ensure product feature evaluations are excluded” (i.e., their product features that might be causing harm)

    > Discussions of which study questions are most likely to yield benefits for the company

Tech = Social media? Maybe to a 5th grader.

obligatory reminder of Thank You for Smoking 2005.

Big Chemical is the new tobacco and always has been.

What has Meta or Google done in comparison to Dow, Bayer, and DuPont?

I doubt tech right now can be equated with tobacco, its use does not kill.

Now AI ? The day will probably come when AI will kill on purpose without a real person's involvement. I know about the Iran School, but at that time I thought I heard the final decision was made by a person as opposed to AI.

So we really need to learn to push back should AI starts heading down that path, even if it costs you your job.