‘We Took a Page from Big Tobacco’s Playbook’: Former Facebook Exec Says Site Was Made to Be ‘Addictive,’ Targeted Teens

Facebook’s gradual addition of measures encouraging addiction was “a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook,” according to former Facebook executive Tim Kendall.

“At Facebook, I believe we sought to mine as much human attention as possible, and turned it into historically unprecedented profits,” Kendall, the company’s former director of monetization, said in Thursday testimony before a House panel. “To do this, we didn’t simply create something useful and fun. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.”

He expanded on those comments in a Thursday evening interview with CNN’s Don Lemon.

“I think when we look back at tobacco, it probably wasn’t obvious, in 1930 and 1940, when they were putting the additives in, you know, each decade, and making the cigarette more and more addictive, exactly what was happening,” Kendall said. “But now that we look back on it, we just see this arc of addiction. And my concern is that I think that we’re seeing the exact same thing with Facebook. I think it started with a small set of features that got put into the service 12, 13 years ago. Status updates, the sorts of things that allowed for popularity and comparison, the things that are creating all these teenage mental health issues.”

Kendall appeared before the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel on Thursday as part of a hearing related to concerns that tech companies Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google parent Alphabet are engaged in anticompetitive practices. The Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Congress are all looking at antitrust allegations related to the companies.

“We’re at a stage where divisiveness and much more toxic additives are being added to the service, and it’s good for business,” Kendall added in his interview with Lemon. “I don’t think it’s going to stop, unless, you know, they’re — they’re forced to stop it. I just have a lot of concerns and a lot of anxiety about it.”

Watch above via CNN.