Menlo Park, CA: Today, Facebook CEO and real-life Revenge of the Nerds character Mark Zuckerberg announced the next step in his race to make Facebook the most hated company in the world: Adding the NSA to everyone’s friend list.
The move comes to counter the recent move by Verizon to make itself enormously unpopular by handing over customer information to the NSA. The ease with which the NSA obtained customer information from Verizon was surprising to some, considering the company’s usual speed at providing information to customers.
“Along with popular new additions like owning the rights to your pictures and making it impossible to delete your information, we’ve joined forces with the NSA as part of the new wave of social media,” Zuckerberg said in a press conference. “We’re calling the movement Preemptive Sharing.”
Facebook users will now see the NSA added to their friends list, though according to Zuckerberg they’ve been on the list from the start. Unfortunately, users will be unable to see the NSA’s activity, but will have all of their albums, statuses and, most importantly, political affiliations shared with their new friend. Selecting “un-friend” on the NSA page takes the user to an aerial photo of their location with the words “Are you sure?” captioned underneath. Clicking “yes” registers the user with the FBI watch list.
The NSA will also be able to enable a “selective newsfeeds” options. However, unlike normal custom newsfeeds that you would add friends, family, or co-workers to respectively, the NSA’s selective newsfeed blocks all communications from any profiles added to reaching other Facebook accounts. Currently, the only profiles on this selective newsfeed are NSA wistle-blower Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and former professional basketball playerturned self-appointed ambassador to North Korea, Dennis Rodman.
Despite its reputation, the NSA is seeking to appear more hip and friendly with its new friends. In the past few weeks, it has tagged over 2 million people in photos with captions like “OMG, who’s that hawt guy ur with? Is he Arab?” and “ROFL u so crazy don’t step out of line. xoxoxo!!!”. Today, the NSA updated its status with “lol totally chillin with some illegal immigrants plannin sum badass attacks on the USA, how bout u? #hangingwithterroristsrightnow #tracemyphone #yolo”
The NSA has also sent out requests to add the new “Patriot App”, an app similar to Farmville, except the farm is in Cuba and comes built with a barbed-wire fence. Players have to keep their livestock alive by watering them frequently and force-feeding them with tiny cartoon tubes.
The forced friend addition has drawn some criticism from users, though Facebook claims it is not significant since only 75% of its users are annoyed, far short of its 90% threshold for taking notice. Obama paid attention, however, and addressed American Facebook users’ concerns in a press conference earlier this week.
“Folks, nobody’s watching your Facebook,” he said with a patient smile and shake of his head. “We’re just collecting information about everything you say and everyone you talk to. You know, just in case. Yolo.”