Same reason the tobacco industry created research programs to look at the health effects of smoking. Neither their nor Facebook's research could ever be mistaken of "industry-leading", though.
Big tobacco's _published_ research reflected their product favorably.
Maybe a better example is oil, where because of legal issues we were able to peer into unpublished research as the public. They indisputably knew about anthropomorphic climate change back in at least the early 80s and continued to push policies to the contrary because otherwise was against their bottom line. They just used their research in order to understand what was coming and create propaganda ahead of the curve.
