How Silicon Valley Uses Big Tobacco, Pharma, and Oil Tactics to Block Regulation

“Move fast and break things.” Once splashed across office walls and echoed by executives, Facebook’s founding mantra has become a rallying cry for Silicon Valley. The slogan paints a picture of an industry driven by a hunger for innovation, with little regard for consequences. From cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to precision algorithmic recommendation systems, Big Tech has raced to create products that capture users’ attention. But when it comes to politics and power, their approach is far less original.

Instead, the richest technology companies in the world have borrowed from the past. Facebook’s then Director of Monetization, Tim Kendall, admitted as much in his testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in a 2020 hearing: “We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook.” Not only has Big Tech poured a combined fifty million dollars into lobbying Congress in the third quarter of 2025, but their most effective tactics — from shaping public perception, deflecting blame, and capturing regulators — trace their lineage directly to the strategies perfected by Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Big Pharma.

The silver lining is that the United States has faced down powerful industries before — and built tools to rein them in. Through a mix of legislation, litigation, and public accountability, policymakers have developed proven tools to protect consumers from ruthless business practices that prioritize profits over protection. Big Tech has borrowed from tried and true industry playbooks to lobby against oversight and kill independent research — but history has shown us that lawmakers and the public have a playbook of their own for how to respond.

This article examines how Big Tech has adopted the tactics of tobacco, oil, and pharmaceutical giants. It is the first in a three-part series exploring the legal mechanism, grounded in historical lessons, that can finally hold technology companies accountable. The second installment will outline a path forward, and the third will address Big Tech’s most common defenses.

Academia up for grabs

Like Big Tobacco before them, social media and AI companies have honed a playbook for discrediting and undermining independent research. Both industries launder their influence through philanthropic fronts, presenting funding initiatives as good-faith responses to public concern. Behind the scenes, however, they exert control — tying grants to favorable research topics, shaping the tone of publications, and pressuring researchers throughout the process. But Big Tech holds a unique advantage that even the tobacco industry lacks: It controls access to the very data needed to study its impact, allowing it to tip the scales from the outset.

In the 1950s, as scientific evidence mounted that linked smoking to lung cancer and public trust in the industry began to erode, Big Tobacco turned to damage control. In 1954, the industry released “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers,” pledging a supposed commitment to public health as a “basic responsibility.” Central to the public relations campaign was the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, which funneled money into so-called “independent” research. In reality, the studies they sponsored were carefully designed to delay regulation and sow doubt.

Much of that research funding sidestepped tobacco’s health effects altogether or diverted attention to alternate culprits, with some research absurdly blaming pet birds for lung cancer. While much of the resulting research was peer-reviewed, the industry’s influence over what questions got asked — and which did not — allowed companies to steer the narrative in their favor.

Today, Big Tech replicates the very same strategy pushed by the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. Following massive scandals, such as Cambridge Analytica, multiple whistleblowers, and a burgeoning youth mental health epidemic, tech giants have rushed in to reclaim public trust. Executives have issued dozens of promises that echo the tone of Big Tobacco’s 1954 statement, accepting blame while pledging reform.

But behind the scenes, tech companies have poured millions of dollars into academic centers across the nation. According to Reuters reporting in 2021, Google established an oversight process for scientific research papers that cover “sensitive topics” — from Chinese influence to “bias in its services” — which required review from the legal, policy, and public relations teams. The article highlighted how “internal reviewers had demanded that at least three papers on AI be modified to refrain from casting Google technology in a negative light.” A senior Google manager, reviewing a study on content recommendation technology, told authors to “take great care to strike a positive tone.” Google also circulated internal “wish lists” of desired paper topics. The resulting work includes claims that there is “no cause for concern” over Google’s extensive use of personal data.

Similarly, multiple Meta whistleblowers came forward in 2025, citing numerous instances where their research, highlighting harms to children, was preemptively shut down by management and the legal team. When one of the whistleblowers told a manager they felt uneasy about instructions to avoid research that would generate evidence of child harm in VR, they were told to “…swallow that ick.” One whistleblower, Jason Sattizahn, detailed how “we researchers were directed how to write reports to limit risk to Meta. Internal work groups were locked down, making it nearly impossible to share data and coordinate between teams to keep users safe.”

Big Tech often sanitizes its own internal research — or promotes studies in which it had a financial stake — packaging the results as independent evidence of its innocence. The tactic closely mirrors the tobacco industry’s historical practice of funding ostensibly neutral research to obscure the harms of smoking and delay public health regulation. In both cases, corporations exploit the credibility of academia to manufacture doubt, stall oversight, and redraw the boundaries of acceptable policy debate.

In another high-profile case, Meta granted a select group of researchers special access to platform data related to elections. One resulting study quickly generated a wave of headlines for the company, suggesting that Facebook’s algorithm does not drive polarization. But the researchers themselves cautioned against such sweeping interpretations, noting that their work had its limitations. In its interpretation of the result, Meta narrowly defined the research question to ask whether or not Facebook was the unambiguous driver of polarization — therefore spinning the results of the study. The media narrative took hold, and years of evidence linking social media to rising political sectarianism were suddenly cast into doubt by a single, tightly circumscribed study.

Both examples closely mirror the tobacco industry’s historical playbook: funding research under the guise of neutrality to downplay public health risks and stall regulation. In both cases, corporate actors leverage the credibility of academia to manufacture doubt, delay oversight, and redefine the boundaries of policy debate.

Buying the story

The oil industry, like Big Tech and Big Tobacco, has also attempted to steer research — just in a different way. Amidst growing scientific concern about the effects of fossil fuels in the 1970s and 1980s, Exxon paid for advertorials in outlets like The New York Times, presenting itself as a responsible energy steward while minimizing evidence of climate change. Advertorials, essentially “op-eds for hire,” use ad space to present writing that masquerades as credible research. They blurred the line between journalism and corporate public relations and worked to sow doubt and delay regulatory scrutiny.

Social media companies have adapted the same tactic under the guise of philanthropy. While oil’s direct pay-per-publish scheme was hidden in plain sight, Meta and Google have added their own spin. In 2021, Meta’s Journalism Project and Google’s News Initiative (GNI) pledged a combined $600 million towards news outlets globally. They framed their investments as “for the public good,” but in practice funneled money to the very outlets responsible for covering their industry’s harms — often placing editors and journalists in impossible positions.

When scandals over children’s mental health or data misuse break, news outlets may find themselves balancing critical reporting against the steady flow of funding from the very platforms they cover. An analysis by the Tech Transparency Project found that tech companies’ investments tend to surge in regions where regulation gains traction. At the start of 2015, the Google News Initiative (GNI) awarded just 22 grants in Europe. That same year, the EU proposed a tax on digital platforms hosting copyrighted content, and the European Commission filed antitrust charges. By 2016, GNI grants in the region had jumped to 276 before plummeting once the regulatory disputes were resolved. When similar legislation surfaced in Brazil, GNI swiftly launched payment programs for Brazilian news outlets.

The result is an information environment where independent scrutiny is often compromised. Just as oil companies once bought favorable coverage to stall accountability, tech companies have borrowed from the past and are quietly shaping the press that surround them.

Fellowships: a man on the inside

However, influencing research and journalism is only one part of the strategy. Like Big Pharma before them, tech companies don’t stop at influencing academic discourse. On the contrary, they embed themselves directly into the policymaking process. What began as an effort to sway science has evolved into an even more insidious tactic that places industry-funded operatives inside regulatory agencies and the halls of Congress.

The pharmaceutical industry has long perfected the “revolving door” strategy. They cycle executives and lobbyists into senior roles at the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and congressional committees, then back into the private sector. A 2018 analysis found that 340 former congressional staffers now work for pharmaceutical companies or their lobbying firms. More than five years later, and the number is likely higher. This constant exchange ensures that regulatory frameworks are written with industry priorities in mind, and oversight is carefully orchestrated not to disrupt corporate profits. Big Tech employs the same method of influence, but with a notable twist: Rather than waiting for employees to rotate into public office, tech companies fund congressional fellows while they’re still working in the legislature.

Notably, Big Tech companies were the third-largest “employer” of former government staff turned lobbyists in 2018. Given the rapid expansion of lobbying in the face of regulatory scrutiny, the problem has likely only worsened. In recent years, the tech industry has further blurred ethical boundaries by funding tech-policy staffers under the guise of fellowships. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS’s) recently launched an AI Fellows program that was reportedly “conceived and substantially coordinated” by a former Microsoft executive and receives roughly 35% of its funding from a handful of tech companies. Some programs explicitly link fellows to corporate sponsors.

In many cases, the fellowships are funded by Open Philanthropy, the grantmaking organization “financed primarily” by former Facebook co-founder and current Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz. For example, the Horizon Institute for Public Service has placed dozens of fellows in congressional offices and committees. According to Politico, “In 2022, Open Philanthropy set aside nearly $3 million to pay for what ultimately became the initial cohort of Horizon fellows.”

By placing privately funded fellows inside government offices, Big Tech has effectively skipped the revolving door and built a direct pipeline of influence into policymaking itself. The arrangements ensure that the industry’s priorities are represented at every level of the policymaking ladder.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

From laundering influence through research and philanthropy to embedding allies inside the halls of power, Silicon Valley has borrowed liberally from the playbooks of Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Big Pharma. Each of these industries followed the same arc: deny harm, distort evidence, and delay oversight. Each claimed that accountability would cripple innovation. And in every case, when the truth finally broke through, regulation restored a measure of balance between private power and the public good.

Big Tech is now using the same playbook, but on a larger, faster, and more insidious scale. Its reach is global, its data control nearly absolute, and its ability to shape knowledge unprecedented. The lesson from history is clear: When corporations wield their wealth to subvert science, manipulate public discourse, and infiltrate policymaking, voluntary reform is a fantasy. Only strong, democratic regulation can realign private incentives with public interest.

The playbook may be old, but the solution is well within reach. Lawmakers have faced this challenge before — and they should already know how to respond. The next article in this series explores what that response should look like, and how the tools that once reined in Big Tobacco and Big Oil can be adapted to finally hold Big Tech accountable.