John Oliver is known for talking about controversial topics from Net Neutrality to President Trump. He recently took a stab at all of the issues surrounding Facebook and their ridiculous apology ad. Listed below are the points John Oliver touched upon in his Last Week Tonight Facebook segment.
Facebook’s Stock Dropped, Company Lost $120 Billion
On July 26th, 2018, Facebook’s stock drastically dropped -3.92% resulting in the loss of $120 Billion. This is most likely the result of recent controversies and the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. In the segment, John Oliver jokes about how the old MySpace should be brought back in light of this stock decline. Honestly, that isn’t a bad idea since most Facebook users are sick of their data being collected and many miss Tom. Do you remember him? He was the best.
John Oliver Reacts To The Facebook Apology Ad
On the show, they played the original apology ad Facebook published after the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. It still makes me cringe seeing this ad since it’s hard to tell whether they’re sincere or not. However, John Oliver’s initial reaction to the video was priceless! He comments with the obvious statement that,
“Facebook was doing literally exactly what it was built for. That’s why it was worth $600 Billion. You didn’t build history’s most profitable data harvesting machine by accident.”
After thinking about this for a little, what John Oliver said about Facebook seems true. A social media platform built for just connecting with your friends isn’t going to be worth billions of dollars. At some point, Facebook likely decided that they needed to expand their platform in order to survive and succeed.
The Many Recent Facebook Controversies
Besides the apology video, John Oliver discussed recent Facebook controversies. The three he brought up were Myanmar activists claiming Facebook aids genocide, Zuckerberg saying he won’t ban Holocaust deniers from the platform, and Facebook using the Puerto Rico disaster as a backdrop for promoting their virtual reality tools.
Regarding the VR demonstration, it was wrong on many levels. The avatars were smiling, casually talking, and high fiving in a hurricane-stricken Puerto Rico. Honestly, what was Zuckerberg thinking when he did this? I get what he was trying to do, but he should have chosen a different location. These are only a few of the many controversies Facebook has faced recently.
John Oliver Parodied The Original Facebook Apology Ad
In true John Oliver fashion, he parodied the Facebook apology ad. To make it short, here’s what he touched upon in it:
- Facebook’s collecting the data of users and their friends.
- They’re making money with ads from companies, app developers, and political campaigns.
- They lost so much money because people found out about what they were secretly doing.
- Facebook will never change. They already have everyone’s data.
- There’s no other platform for people to switch to.
- Facebook will continue to be a place where users waste their time watching videos and are jealous of their old friends.
- The new Facebook tagline should be, “We own who you are”.
Even though this parody may seem over the top in some ways, it points out the truth about Facebook. They’ll likely never change and will continue to collect super-detailed information about people that you wouldn’t even find on a simple background check.
Watch the full Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Facebook segment below.
What are your thoughts about Facebook? Read more about it and other social media platforms on DigitalAddictsBlog.com.
