
Facebook CIA Project: The Onion News Network
About this video
A short satirical Onion News Network segment presenting Facebook as a CIA project. It plays on surveillance and data-collection fears.
Why it appears in the archive
HN commenters post it whenever surveillance or social-media privacy stories seem to confirm the joke, noting how prescient it looks.
AI-generated summary and labels from the source dataset; verify important details against the video. Source & credits.
From the Hacker News discussion
I love this The Onion video that is a news report on the CIA's most successful project ever, Facebook: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗Once again, the Onion got there first. [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.
Read original comment ↗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: [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.
Read original comment ↗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] [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗The Onion's parody on Facebook's CIA ownership is now sounding eerily accurate. For those who haven't seen it: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗Plot twist: The onion becomes the CIA project that fools people on using Facebook, another CIA project: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗