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1 HN recommender · recommended in 6 months, 2012–2023
3:15 · 761K views · Mar 19, 2011
A short satirical Onion News Network segment presenting Facebook as a CIA project. It plays on surveillance and data-collection fears.
HN commenters post it whenever surveillance or social-media privacy stories seem to confirm the joke, noting how prescient it looks.
6 comments from Hacker News
I love this The Onion video that is a news report on the CIA's most successful project ever, Facebook: this video
My impression is that a Never Collect Data Usable Against Minorities Pledge shouldn't be signed by people supporting exactly that to tune of billions of dollars and nearly as many users under surveillance. Unless they're full of shit. Hell, even The Onion saw how helpful such companies are: this video I remember watching it knowing it was satire but most of the benefits were still true. I bet the people against discrimination and such at those locations are still coding away at the algorithms and data stores to make it happen. Easier to put your name on something than to make real sacrifices. Do email me, though, when a story pops up that Google or Facebook got rid of all saved data that could be used to hurt unpopular groups all thanks to such people in the company.
I agree, but there are hundreds if not thousands of AI startups trying to make their own relevant LLM, and they're going to be scraping Twitter. The Onion called it many years ago [1]: "400 billion tweets and not one useful bit of data was ever transmitted". [1] this video
Once again, the Onion got there first. this video I will start worrying when companies are legally required to let the FBI trawl through the databases without a warrant. It's hard to make a law against scraping public information.
The Onion's parody on Facebook's CIA ownership is now sounding eerily accurate. For those who haven't seen it: this video