As Facebook continues to move away from employing actual fact checkers, and instead relying on community notes by users, John Oliver created an ad detailing the social media platform’s new strategy: “f— it.” And he got some help from Cecily Strong, Ronny Chieng and more.
The main story of Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight” focused on content moderation on social media — or rather, the increasing lack thereof — mostly taking aim at Facebook, and laying the blame squarely at the feet of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“Trump threatened Mark Zuckerberg with life in prison, then Zuckerberg turned around, gave him money, hired one of his buddies, and changed the direction his company was going,” Oliver said. “It doesn’t take a genius to draw a conclusion there.”
Oliver noted that Zuckerberg will “insist these changes are not a result of being under political pressure, but either way, Facebook sure seems now set to become an absolute sewer of hatred and misinformation.”
The HBO host joked that that’s how some people already see the site, “but we’re about to see what happens when they really stop trying.” So, Oliver had a request.
“If Facebook is going to continue to subject us to a steadily rising tide of slurs, hoaxes and misinformation, the least it can do is tell us the actual truth in its messaging,” he said
To cap things off, an ad began playing that did just that. Starring “SNL” alum Cecily Strong, “The Daily Show” correspondent Ronny Chieng and more as Facebook employees, they cheerfully introduced “the actual truth” of the site’s strategy: “f— it.”
“To be clear, all our previous issues remain, but by strategically pivoting to ‘f— it,’ we found it’s now more of a you problem,” Strong said. She later added, “And to those who say this is just us rolling over for President Trump in the hopes he won’t throw us all in prison, let me forcefully say: nuh-uh!”
To end the add, Facebook’s new tagline was revealed by an infomercial voice.
“It’s like a town square, if your town was also full of Russian spies and bots, some teenagers disguised as adults, and some adults disguised as teenagers, getting together at all hours of the day or night to say whatever they want, including conspiracy theories plus variations on ‘But the Nazis also had some good ideas!’ and also now you are the mayor and police of your town square.”
You can watch the full segment from “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” in the video above.
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