It is no different than Big Tobacco putting all kinds of additives and carcigenic substances on cigarettes to get people more addicted to it.

"Users seem happy", the same can be said about smokers and tobacco. The issue is not even with the smoking per se. If tobacco companies were simply processing the plant and giving users what people have done for hundreds (thousands?) of years, it would be fine by me. The problem of Big Tobacco is in developing the mechanisms where they stopped satisfying consumer demand and artificially creating it.

Facebook (not just them, you can include actually all of Big Media) is doing the same thing to people. I'd be ashamed to work on FB, or Fox or CNN just the same way I would if I were working on Philip & Morris

It's a little off-topic but honestly the idea that Facebook is somehow the the cause of all these modern problems is pretty tenuous to me. Most Facebook users don't go crazy & belligerent from use, the effects are not at all like the consistent & universal harm of nicotine and cigarette smoke. It suggests to me that Facebook might exacerbate existing problems, but it is not the straightforwardly harmful product that people claim it is.

They don't have to be "the cause of all modern problems" to be frowned upon. Just the fact that they are part of the problem and not part of the solution is enough for me to want to get rid of it and to think poorly of anyone that wants to work there.

This is where I stop agreeing with you. It is an established scientific fact that smoking is harmful to anyone doing it. Why are you confident that social media is also harmful or goes against people's self-interest? People choose to use it; they connect with people they know on it. Is there some study I'm missing that shows social media causes clinical depression or some other adverse affect?

editing: rereading what you wrote and it sounds like your issue is not that FB is harmful but that it is purposely addictive/getting people to do something they wouldn't otherwise. Hmm...when people talk about addiction like alcoholism, gambling, drug use etc. it's always connected to adverse affects -- like overdose, job-loss, divorce etc. The addiction interferes with a person's ability carry out their normal responsibilities. People are not becoming homeless because of Facebook addition. You could make a similar argument about caffeine which causes chemical addiction to change people's behavior but is widely accepted. BTW how do you feel about World of Warcraft addiction?

WoW addiction? Bad for sure, but Blizzard does not make more money in direct correlation with the time that the people spend playing, do they? Does a 3h/day gamer makes only half the revenue of a 6h/day gamer? I guess not.

Coffee companies do the same, their goal is that you repeatedly come back to consume more of their coffee, decaf or not. The more frequently and voraciously customers consume their coffee, the more money they make from coffee sales. You think they don't also market test coffee variations for popularity?

Almost every company in the world optimizes for more; more consumption, more usage, more sales. The idea that Facebook is somehow in a league of its own for how it optimizes is clearly not true.

I am using the term in the same sense you are. People feel dependent on their social networks, their apps and even declare to feel things akin to withdrawal syndrome when they are away from their devices or haven't checked their networks for updates.

And again, the fact that "other companies do similar things" is not an excuse, less so due to the fact that Facebook has way more reach and uses technology that can amplify their effectiveness infinitely. I don't have Starbucks baristas knocking on my door offering me coffee, I do have Facebook listening to conversations inside my house because of my wife's phone.