When the latest episode of Saturday Night Live wasn’t focused on Kardashian-centric sketches, the show was slamming Facebook over a whistleblower’s scathing revelations into the social media company’s “betrayal of democracy,” with both the cold open sketch and Weekend Update dedicated to Facebook.
“Internal documents show that Facebook knew their platform was used to spread hate and disinformation but they hid the evidence,” co-anchor Colin Jost — who attended Harvard at the same time as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — said on Weekend Update.
“Now the weird thing is, I went to school with Mark Zuckerberg and I was there when he created Facebook, and I feel terrible. Sometimes I wish I had a time machine so I can go back to college and find Mark and say, ‘Hey man, can I be part of your company?’”
Jost added, “Facebook’s also denying a report that’s saying using Instagram can cause users to develop a negative body image, which explains their rival’s new slogan: TikTok, Bring Your Fat Ass Over Here.”
“This week Instagram was down for an entire day, forcing many Instagram addicts to fill their time with Twitter, TikTok or hosting SNL,” co-anchor Michael Che joked as a photo of host Kim Kardashian during the opening monologue popped up on the screen.
Facebook was also the focus of SNL’s cold open, where tech-clueless senators questioned the Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen (played by Heidi Gardner) about how the social network “chooses profits over the welfare of children,” among other Facebook-related questions like how big the algorithm is and the meaning of memes they found online: