Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a video on Instagram on the Fourth of July showing him riding a motorized surfboard while waving a large American flag as John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” plays in the background.
“Happy July 4th!” Zuckerberg wrote in the caption, along with a U.S. flag emoji.
The post became the subject of mockery on social media, with one Twitter user writing, “You know this video is real because Mark Zuckerberg looks computer-generated.”
“Facebook’s PR team spent years trying to craft Zuckerberg’s image, which is funny because the strategy now seems to be ‘let the dude let his freak flag fly,'” another user tweeted.
Others took the mockery a step further, editing the videos to make it appear as though Zuckerberg was waving a flag that states “facebook SUCKS” or the Chinese Communist Party flag.
“Zuckerberg flying his own flag!!” one user tweeted.
“Flag Fixed, Music Fixed,” another Twitter user wrote, sharing video of Zuckerberg with the Chinese Communist flag while “YMCA” in Mandarin plays in the background.
“While other billionaires battled to get to low orbit first, Zuckerberg rode a powered levitating boogie board while carrying a Very Big American Flag,” one Twitter user wrote, referencing upcoming space flights scheduled by billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos.
Other Twitter users criticized the CEO’s patriotic post, citing recent developments on Facebook in which users were notified if they had been exposed to “extremist content” or asked if they are concerned about someone they know becoming an extremist.
“Next thing you know Zuckerberg will be rollin’ coal in a lift kit F450 with giant American flags around Palo Alto, blasting ‘Dixie’ on the air horns. It is our duty [to] report him at once to the Facebook Council of Extremism Scrutinizers,” one Twitter user posted.
Last week, reporter Brendan Gutenschwager tweeted screenshots of both “extremist” Facebook notices. “Facebook notifying some users ‘you may have been exposed to harmful extremist content recently’ with a new notice and link for ‘support from experts,’” he wrote.
Gutenschwager also tweeted photos from the “Get Support” link. The link shows the statement “Minorities are destroying the country” and then provides counter-statements such as “Some violent extremist groups wrongly say that for the United States to succeed, its citizens should all be of one culture. However, there are amazing benefits to diversity . . .” and “Hate groups oversimplify problems by blaming them on one group of people. Some groups claim the problem is the immigrants, while others claim it is the jews, the Black community and or another group.”
