Couldn't agree more. I think Facebook is kind of crappy. But there is basically zero scientific evidence that Facebook is destroying democracies. That's a media narrative at this point. There's a bunch of anecdotal evidence that matches up with a particular view point of the current political landscape. It confirms how people are feeling and therefore is accepted as true. Nevermind that it would be virtually impossible to actual tease out how much misinformation and social division to lay at the feet of Facebook. Nevermind that democratic states throughout history have radicalized, polarized and disinformed themselves without the help of Facebook or even the internet for that matter.

In the case of cigarettes, the companies had the answer to these kinds of questions for decades and used it specifically to mislead the direction of public discovery. In their case, they had to risk their own studies in almost all cases instead of just monitoring their own distribution system.

When Facebook says they don't know something there are a few possibilities, the least likely is that they don't know and don't have a reason not to find out.

I do agree with you that it is not up to them to fix. They should be limited to whatever extent possible in what research they can do on their own discretion to prevent them from staying ahead of public information and misleading research.

It's the algorithmic selection of the most shocking posts that aggrevates the problem. They know what ends up getting promoted, and they don't care about the damage.