Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) understood CO2 emissions caused by fossil fuel consumption were causing climate change on a catastrophic scale [1]. What followed we

Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) understood CO2 emissions caused by fossil fuel consumption were causing climate change on a catastrophic scale [1]. What followed were decades of denial, push-back and intentional disinformation. Only fairly recently have fossil-fuel companies admitted the product they have so eagerly promoted and sold for decades is destroying life on Earth. Perhaps what's at stake here is not the careful balance of life on a global scale, but what's worrying is that it's a similar pattern: - Something bad is going on. Researchers find it can attributed to the cash-cow of a multi-billion company. - The corporation denies it. They have their own research showing it's good. - Some time later, the truth comes out. The company knew all along that what they sold was bad, and any internal efforts to make it better were shut down because they hurt the bottom-line. The planet isn't as stake here but a lot is— teenagers shouldn't be stressing, nor should misinformation keep spreading, etc so Facebook can keep milking its cash cow. The point of comparison isn't that Facebook is literally causing deaths, but that they are putting profits before the well-being of the people they know they're pushing a harmful product to. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210211073059/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/science/pressure-on-exxon-over-climate-change-intensifies-with-new-documents.html?_r=1 https://web.archive.org/web/20210211073059/https://www.nytim...