Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Feels The Burn Of Bipartisan Backlash Amid Data Scandal
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been under fire from all sides ever since news broke that the social media giant had improperly allowed third parties to access user data without their consent.
The latest celebrity to pile on was comedian Stephen Colbert, who scorched Zuckerberg in a Late Show monologue during which he called Facebook a “pimp” (see below).
“I have not deleted my Facebook page because I never had one,” Colbert said. “You know nothing about me, Sucker-berg!”
“We’ve learned over the last few days that you’re not the customer; your life is their product. And Facebook is the pimp.”
Many people, including billionaire Elon Musk and actor Will Ferrell, deleted their Facebook accounts in the wake of the data breach scandal. Even corporations like Playboy magazine joined the mushrooming Delete Facebook movement.
“That’s going to sting!” Colbert laughed. “Now where are those people going to find porn on the internet?”
Colbert then joked that he plans to launch his own social media platform to provide an alternative to the Facebook monopoly. “I’m proud to announce my new service, Amishbook: everything about Facebook…except the electricity,” he quipped.
TONIGHT: With #Facebook under fire from users and the government, Stephen senses that the time is right to launch a new social network. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/gTzpmsIMHe
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) March 31, 2018
The needling by self-proclaimed liberals like Stephen Colbert may surprise some fans because Mark Zuckerberg was a longtime darling of the mainstream media and was even promoted as a potential presidential candidate for 2020.
Well, all that has changed amid revelations that Facebook has been secretly hoarding user data for years in order to sell that information to marketing groups for profit.
Stock Decimated Since Scandal Broke
Since the news broke on March 16, about $74 billion have been wiped off Facebook’s market capitalization, according to data from YCharts. FB’s market cap was $538 billion on March 16. Today, it’s $464 billion.
And Facebook stock — once the darling of Wall Street — has cratered since March 16 as regulators in the United States and Europe have launched investigations into the company’s dubious data retention practices.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has slammed Mark Zuckerberg for exploiting Facebook users. “The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product,” Cook said. “We’ve elected not to do that.”
Before the data scandal broke, conservatives had already expressed disgust at what they call Facebook’s censorship of conservative viewpoints.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson launched a volcanic smack-down of FB on a recent show.
Facebook is not a neutral host. It has a political agenda.
Tucker explained: “Earlier this year, Facebook altered its algorithms for what news stories its users see. And the result conclusively have been devastating for conservatives online. Breitbart the news site has basically lost about 30 percent of its traffic since that happened..Daily Caller is down…Fox, by the way, is down too.”
Carlson said Facebook’s latest algorithm changes were tailored to benefit liberal media outlets.
“Meanwhile, the purveyors of approved ‘elite’ opinions like CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post — they’ve been unaffected by this,” Tucker said. “What is this? Well, it’s an act of ideological warfare.”
