Mark Zuckerberg, is that you?
It’s not. And that’s the point.
The Facebook founder and CEO of the platform’s behemoth parent company, Meta, just had his likeness used in a rather cutting advertisement produced by the progressive activist group Demand Progress.
The ad, which was released this week, deploys a deepfake of Zuckerberg to needle Democratic lawmakers for their ineptitude and failure to impose regulations on powerful tech platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram.
In recent years, congressional investigations, whistleblower testimony and news reports have all highlighted Meta’s failure to curb disinformation, hate speech and dubious manipulation efforts. Yet Facebook — and virtually every other major social media platform plagued with similar issues — has evaded regulation during the time Democrats have held control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.
And #FakeZuck is all smiles.
“Over the past five years, Congress has held over 30 hearings designed to hold Big Tech accountable,” Deepfake Zuckerberg says in the manipulated video. He adds: “Sometimes [they] land a punch … [but] most of the time it felt like playing patty-cake.”
The video immediately cuts to actual footage of an embarrassing line of questioning that the late Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, lobbed at Zuckerberg in 2018.
“Either way,” #FakeZuck says, “it looks like the most consequential action that Congress is poised to take — a bipartisan bill to prevent companies like mine from self-dealing — is about to fade away like so many efforts to rein in Big Tech in the past.”
And it would be in poor taste to announce such news without paying respects, no? Fake Zuckerberg wraps up the ad with toasts to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, saying they did him a solid by delaying the legislation and leaving it to an incoming GOP majority seemingly certain not to take it up. “Thank you for your service to me and all of my friends,” #FakeZuck says. Ouch. P.S. The deepfake is a nice creative touch, because it is a prime example of the dangers that await us if regulations aren’t imposed on Big Tech. Read more about that here.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. Recommended
