John Oliver's scorching debullshitification of Facebook's apology ads

Cory Doctorow 6:46 am Mon Jul 30, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbNv9MP27xE

Apparently Facebook is running TV ads apologizing for being a creepy stalker optimized for organizing Nazi hate-mobs and genocidal pogroms (also apparently: now that all the young people are leaving Facebook, TV is how you reach the company's core user-base).

It's your basic mealy-mouthed crisis communication: prevarication, misdirection and minimization dressed up as frank soul-searching, and John Oliver's remix of the ad is pretty much perfect in pointing this out.

“We came here for your data and the data of everyone you’ve ever come into contact with,” the ad's narrator says. “Your data allowed us to make a fuckton of ad money … but here’s the thing. Nothing’s going to change. We’ve got your data, we’ve got your friends. And really, where are you going to go?”

John Oliver Calls Facebook 'History's Most Profitable Data-Harvesting Machine' [Jason Koebler/Motherboard]

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