Saturday Night Live made fun of Jeff Bezos's billionaire space race. This week, it took aim at senators who held this weeks Facebook whistleblower hearing. They were described as confused by social media and the memes that they found online (or "mem-ays" as Aidy Bryants Ted Cruz calls them).
Cecily Strong plays the role of Senator Dianne Feinstein. She asks Heidi Gardners Frances Haugen questions about Animorphs posts, while Kyle Mooney asks Sen. John Kennedy about Facebook's algorithm: Do you have it with yourself now?
Bryant, Sen. Cruz, asks if posts saying Ted Cruz sucks should get flagged as misinformation. Haugen replies that it isn't misinformation but just one person's opinion. Bryants Cruz responds that Bryants Cruz is more than one person.
The sketch's biggest laugh came from when Pete Davidson, the OG social media king, was introduced to the hearing as Tom Anderson of MySpace. Remember me? I was innocent! I wasn't doing any weird algorithm stuff that we barely maintained the website. He said, inviting people in to check out his friends band from 20 year ago.
Tom, we didn't know how great it was. (And yes, MySpace is still available, but I couldn't remember my username.
The OG social media king pic.twitter.com/2OQm1LXGq0 Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) October 10, 2021
The real Haugen was a former Facebook product manager. She testified before Congress Tuesday about a collection of internal documents that she gave to The Wall Street Journal. The hearing focused on Facebook's internal research which showed that Instagram could have a negative impact on young people. Haugen stated that Facebook's need to engage users in order sell ads meant they kept them on the site despite knowing that users were engaging with harmful content.
In a Facebook post. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, disputed this assertion and called it absurd that the company would promote content that angers people to make a profit.
Below is a video of SNL's version.
