Facebook is having a Big Oil moment

Sen. Richard Blumenthal mentioned a familiar metaphor in the Facebook whistleblower hearing on Tuesday. “Facebook and Big Tech are facing their Big Tobacco moment,” he said, arguing that the social network’s products “can be addictive and toxic to children.” Frances Haugen, the aforementioned whistleblower, has similarly called Facebook’s decisions “disastrous” and has said that the company “chooses profit over safety.”

Do these phrases remind you of Big Tobacco? Sure. They also make me think of Big Oil.

At its best, Facebook’s products are a resource that has led to some good. (Connecting people online can be a powerful thing!) The company also produces an untold quantity of byproducts that lead to a lot of undesired effects. (Helping destroy democracy wasn’t exactly part of Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for world domination.) With nearly 3 billion users around the globe, Facebook isn’t going away anytime soon.

The Big Tobacco metaphor does a good job of framing Facebook’s products as unhealthy. The only problem with comparing the two is that you can pretty easily avoid cigarettes these days. But it’s actually quite difficult to spend a day on the internet without interacting with Facebook.