Colbert: Facebook Is ‘Like a Bank That Just Gave Bank Robbers Your Money Because That’s Their Business Model’ (Video)
“Oh, hey, does anybody here use Facebook?” Stephen Colbert asked during his “Late Show” monologue Tuesday night, a question that was met with affirmative cheers from the audience. “Still?”
Colbert returned again on Tuesday to a topic that threatens to get lost among the myriad major ongoing Donald Trump-related stories at the moment — something Colbert clearly doesn’t want to happen.
“The company is reeling from revelations that they allowed the private information of 50 million Americans to be harvested by the Trump campaign’s consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica, by the way,” Colbert paused for a moment as the audience booed. “Yeah, I know. Cambridge Analytica, by the way, also the scientific name for John Oliver.”
Colbert then described the Cambridge Analytica situation again briefly before launching into a series of hilarious metaphors to describe our troubling social dependence on Facebook.
“Cambridge Analytica got all this data from a personality quiz, which claimed to be for research purposes. But it actually harvested psychological data and got access to some data on the user’s Facebook friends, which explains that fun question, ‘If you were your friends’ credit card number, what would you be?'” Colbert joked.
“Now, people are blaming Facebook for this because they handed over all your data willingly. It’s less like they’re a bank that got robbed at gunpoint and more like a bank that just gave bank robbers your money because that’s their business model. But now you can’t quit the bank because your whole family is at the bank, and also the bank is where you get to see if your high school friends got fat.”
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Then Colbert had a choice joke about Facebook’s propensity for spreading fake news.
“Now, after this revelation yesterday, Facebook’s stock value dropped by $36 billion. Or, as the story was reported on your newsfeed, ‘Facebook’s Shares Tank Thanks To Hillary Pizza Sex Ring! #Benghazi,'” Colbert said, as an image of that fake article headline on Facebook appeared on screen. “Now, it seems like now would be a good time for some damage control from Facebook CEO and guy who wants you to play a complicated board game he invented, Mark Zuckerberg. Faced with a scandal of this magnitude, Zuckerberg released a powerful denial saying…”
“The Late Show” then displayed the standard news graphic of Zuckerberg’s face on a blue screen with a quote box next to it — but because Zuckerberg has been notably silent about the whole thing, the screen was blank where a quote normally would be, and tumbleweeds rolled across the bottom of the graphic.
You can watch this portion of the monologue from Tuesday’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in the video above.
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