The Onion: Facebook "Is Truly A Dream Come True For The CIA" (Video)

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Erick Schonfeld is the Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. He oversees the editorial content of the site, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three adorable children. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular... → Learn More

You did know that Facebook is a ‘massive online surveillance program run by the CIA,” right? And that Mark Zuckerberg is a CIA agent codenamed the Overlord? Just watch the Onion video above. It explains the whole thing.

I especially like the Congressional “testimony” from the deputy CIA director:

After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded so many people would willingly publicize where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of all their friends, personal emails addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves, and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment. It is truly a dream come true for the CIA.

Not only that, think how much money it saves the CIA. Unfortunately, other CIA programs like Twitter aren’t doing so welll: “400 billion Tweets, and not one useful bit of data was ever transmitted.”

Also note the chart showing the success of Operation Farmville, which “the CIA credits with pacifying as many as 85 million people after unemployment rates rose dramatically.” It plots time spent playing Farmville versus hours working.

Company: Facebook
Website: facebook.com
Launch Date: February 1, 2004
Funding: $2.34B

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...

Learn more
Company: Zynga
Website: zynga.com
Launch Date: July 2007
IPO: NASDAQ:ZNGA

Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus and is named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen. The early supporting founding team included Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, Justin Waldron, Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale, John Doerr, Steve Schoettler, Kevin Hagan, and Andrew Trader. Zynga’s mission is connecting the world through games. Everyday millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through our...

Learn more

Sponsored Ads

Sponsored Ads

Sponsored Ads

Upcoming Events

SXSW 2012

Austin, Texas

Disrupt NY 2012

New York City

Disrupt SF 2012

San Francisco, CA