GAVEL NOISE!
“Order. Order. Everybody simmer. HEY! SIT YOUR BOBO ASSES DOWN! I am not Steny Hoyer. Auntie Maxine will not abide by any foolishness from anyone in here. You best behave yourselves in my hearing. The Financial Services Committee welcomes the CEO of Facebook, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg.”
“Chairwoman Waters, I thank you for this opportunity to fly across the country and get yelled at.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg, the Presidential election is almost upon us, and you have done less than nothing to make sure that Facebook is not once again overrun with bad actors, foreign influences, and whatever the hell ‘bots’ are.”
“I disagree with that, ma’am.”
“How so?”
“We did do something.”
“What?”
“We monetized the bad actors.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg, you have a problem. Facebook is where most Americans get their news, and you have allowed it to become a cesspool. Is there any formal vetting of political advertisements on your platform?”
“Well, sure. The checks have to officially clear. We’re very formal when it comes to getting paid. We stand on ceremony there.”
“What you’re saying is that any organization that pays for space on your service can have it, regardless of its message?”
“No. We would not allow actionable calls to violence. Just suggestions that violence is justified against certain groups. Wait, no. The Rohingya. Sometimes we do allow direct calls to violence. But that was in Myanmar, so my lawyers have told me that it doesn’t count.”
“It most certainly does count.”
“I agree. Violence is bad.”
“Mm-hmm. I will yield my time. The Chair recognizes Bill Foster from the great state of Illinois.”
“Thank you, Chairwoman Waters. Mr. Zuckerberg, I would like to ask you some questions about Facebooks’s cryptocurrency program called Libra. Could you describe in plain terms what Libra is?”
“It is a plan to make money.”
“Facebook already makes billions of dollars a year.”
“No, I meant make money. Like, we’re gonna start printing our own currency. Not actually ‘printing.’ Everything’s gonna be digital, obviously.”
“Uh-huh. And who would keep this digital information?”
“I would. We. We would. Libra will make the consumers’ lives easier. Imagine a treasury, a national bank, the mall, and Twitter combined.”
“What you’re describing is a Phillip K. Dick novel. No one wants to live in one of his books. What kind of assurances can you give this committee about security when it comes to your cryptocurrency?”
“Oh, I can give assurances.”
…
“I assure you.”
“What technical steps have you taken to make your product safe?”
“It’s inherently a lot safer than so-called ‘real’ money. Can’t choke on it.”
“From hackers, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
“Stealing is bad.”
“We know that. How will you prevent people’s money from getting stolen?”
“What I find works for me is to have so much money that it can’t all be stolen at once. That would be my advice.”
“I yield my time in disgust back to the Chair.”
“Thank you, Congressman. This committee now recognizes the Honorable Gentleman from Florida, Bill Posey.”
“I do appreciate your recognition, Madame Chair. Mr. Zuckerberg, I am a man of science, but also a fierce champion of free speech. It worried me that Facebook saw fit to censor voices on one side of the vaccine debate.”
“There is no debate, Congressman.”
“Hold your horses, pal. I have done my research–almost all of it on your very site–and I know for a fact that vaccines are one of the leading killers of Americans today. You got smoking, then there’s suicide, and then vaccines. Higher than car crashes!”
“That is not true.”
“Many doctors, some of whom have been to my private home and met my private wife, agree that vaccines cause athleticism.”
“Autism.”
“That, too.”
“No, Congressman. Vaccines do not cause anything but long lives. And if they did cause athleticism, that’s a good thing.”
“Not for your feet. It burns!”
“I don’t understand where this line of questioning is going.”
“Will you or will you not commit to personally unvaccinating your children?”
“That’s not a thing. And, no.”
“You proved my case.”
“What case?”
“That vaccines introduce tiny Jewish goblins into the bloodstream.”
“Is his time almost up?”
“All our time is almost up! I’d rather get the flu than have Jewish goblins of any size in me!”
GAVEL NOISE!
“What the hell is wrong with you, boy? Quit your playing. The Chair takes the rest of your time back due to you not knowing how to act right, and awards it to the Distinguished Gentlewoman from Queens, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.”
FRAT BOY AND AN IDIOT BURSTING INTO THE ROOM NOISE
“This is a mutiny! We hereby place all Democrats in the room under citizen’s arrest!”
“LOUIE!”
“Congressman Gaetz! Congressman Gohmert! What are you doing? Get out of here!”
“All of this is phony and a sham, and the Constitution says that Puerto Rican ladies can’t be in Congress!”
“LOUIE!”
“Out! Out! Security!”
FRAT BOY AND AN IDIOT BEING WRESTLED OUT OF THE ROOM NOISE
“I will not have it, I will not put up with it. Next person in here that acts up is getting my size four up their ass. I’ll put it way up there, too. Test me, I dare you. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez?”
“Thank you, ma’am. Mr. Zuckerberg, I have some questions about your fact-checking department.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have one?”
“Not as such.”
“What does that mean?”
“We outsource our judgement about what is and isn’t a fact.”
“To whom?”
“We also crowdsource our judgement.”
“What does that mean?”
“Facebook believes that the average consumer is far more savvy than you Washington elites give them credit, and is easily capable of seeing through high-level disinformation campaigns.”
“Advertisers on Facebook are able to narrowcast their ads to very specific demographics. Could a political campaign that desired to suppress the African-American vote send ads to that community stating that the date of Election Day had been changed?”
“You can’t change Election Day. It’s in the Constitution.”
“Right. It would be a lie.”
“Lying is bad.”
“Sure is, slugger.”
“So I don’t think that would happen.”
“Multiple agencies in the Intelligence Community have determined that incidents like that did happen during the 2016 election. On your platform, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
“People are so disappointing sometimes.”
“What if a company wished to advertise a pill that it claimed cured cancer? Would you allow that ad?”
“Did the pill cure cancer?”
“No.”
“Is the word ‘cure’ in quotations on the ad? Punctuation is the facial expression of language.”
“I have no idea what that means. Mr, Zuckerberg, could I run ads with a photoshopped picture of me hugging Republicans in tight districts? I’m the last person in the world any Republican wants to be see hugging. Probably piss off a couple of their voters. Could I do that?”
“Congresswoman, NBC ran ads for years telling the country that Bill Cosby was a trustworthy family man.”
“Not relevant.”
“I’ll give you five million dollars in cash if you yield your time back to the Chair.”
“Answer the question, Mr. Zuckerberg.”
“Photoshop is bad.”
“Forget the Photoshop. Could I run a text ad asserting that a Republican candidate had voted for my Green New Deal bill?”
“Did that even come up for a vote?”
“No! It’s all a lie.”
“Lying is bad.”
“I tell you what, Mr. Zuckerberg–”
“Please stop asking me things, please stop asking me things.”
“–I’m gonna change topics.”
“Can we talk about Roman History? I love Ancient Rome. It’s where I got the idea for my haircut.”
“Not Rome. Recently, you have had several dinners with far-right wackadoodles.”
“I disagree with your classification.”
“One of the participants was a Twitter user who goes by the name Big Chief Memosabe and posts doctored videos of President Trump teabagging his political opponents, myself included?”
“Congresswoman, I’m sorry you got teabagged.”
“And at these dinners you discussed their assertion that social media is biased against conservatives. Do you believe that social media is biased against conservatives, Mr. Zuckerberg?”
“I don’t know what my final opinion on that is, Congresswoman, but an outside panel we consulted with did agree that there was.”
“Who was the outside panel?”
“Well, Memosabe was on it. That guy’s on the ball about life.”
GAVEL NOISE!
“Okay, give it a rest, Congresswoman. The boy’s clearly a dullard. We’re gonna take a five-minute recess so I can do something about my corns.”
GAVEL NOISE!
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