The Onion, a very popular satirical news site widely regarded as hilarious, has been targeting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in recent days — at least more so than usual — because it finds the company’s conduct to be reprehensible.
Specifically, the publication’s chief doesn’t like the social media giant’s changes to how users receive publishers’ content.
“We have 6,572,949 followers on Facebook who receive an ever-decreasing amount of the content we publish on the network,” Onion Editor-in-Chief Chad Nackers told Business Insider, while describing Facebook as an “unwanted interloper” between the publisher and its followers.
In just a roughly two-day span, The Onion published around a dozen articles that were centered around Facebook and its fresh-faced leader, according to BI. Like almost all of its articles, they of course weren’t written or designed in a flattering light. Rather, they ridiculed and in the process chastised Zuckerberg, but framed it in a way that relates to recent happenings.
“Mark Zuckerberg Insists Anyone With Same Skewed Values And Unrelenting Thirst For Power Could Have Made Same Mistakes,” the headline from a Thursday article read.
The piece facetiously and fictionally quotes Zuckerberg to make a point and people laugh. As is the outlet’s style, it includes long-winded descriptions after invented quotes to pepper the subject with as much cheeky criticism as possible. The fake quote said:
I know I screwed up, and I understand why you’re all upset, but if you were a morally corrupt megalomaniac hell-bent on manipulating society to your twisted whims, you would have done the exact same thing,’ said Zuckerberg, suggesting that people should put themselves in the shoes of a self-absorbed asshole with a warped perception of humanity who justified the exploitation of personal connections as a means of amassing unfettered influence and profits to truly comprehend why he made every completely fucked-up decision. ‘Listen, any cruel and sadistic piece of shit in my position would willingly cheapen the human experience into a series of superficial interactions to further their own tainted legacy.
“Creepy Weirdo Still Stalking You On Facebook,” reads another headline with a presumably photoshopped picture of Zuckerberg sadly looking down at a computer.
Known to be rather ruthless in which nothing seems to be off-limits, The Onion also wrote one in the perspective of Zuckerberg’s baby daughter.
“I’m not sure I even know who you are deep down. And I’m not sure I really want to know the person who created this website,” the piece said. “Are you a monster, Daddy? I’m scared to be related to you.”
There are several others, including videos, that many around the world likely find to be hilarious, but not Zuckerberg.
“We are strong proponents of the First Amendment, and the fuel of a functioning democracy is the free flow of information. Facebook, the world’s largest sieve of personal data, has become an unwanted interloper between The Onion and our audience,” Nackers said, according to BI.
Facebook has been trying to intensify its battle against fake news, which could conceivably mean that satirical sites like The Onion are restricted even more through its algorithms — automated technology that is often imperfect. Facebook, however, says it is trying to determine the “fine line between misinformation and satire or opinion” in its quest against false or misleading stories.
As portrayed in many of the articles, it’s not just the changes to the News Feed, which now limits the reach of the publisher’s content, unless one pays to “promote” it further. The Onion seems to feel, like large portions of the public do, that Facebook doesn’t care about the privacy of users, especially in comparison to profits. (RELATED: No, Mark Zuckerberg Is Not Running For President)
The Onion, much like Zuckerberg’s allegedly “unrelenting thirst for power,” doesn’t plan on letting up anytime soon.
“What you’ve seen over the last 48 hours is only the tip of the iceberg,” Nackers told BI.
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