Stewart Slams Facebook Deal: 'I'm Unfriending Goldman Sachs' (VIDEO)

The world learned a lot more about Facebook's financials recently as the privately-held company accepted a very public investment of $450 million from Goldman Sachs, yet found a loop hole to stay private for now and avoid transparency.

On Thursday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart went to town on the hypocrisy.

"Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want to be transparent?" Stewart said. "The guy whose immense success was founded upon mining our personal data?"

It is ironic that Facebook won't go public, especially considering clips Stewart procured from a 2008 conference where Facebook founder Zuckerberg said one of the site's missions was to push people all over the world to share more and more information. Stewart gave an idea of what that would look like:

"Yes, we will not rest until everyone in the world is walking around naked, holding out their passports and shouting out their kids' names and locations -- But don't look at our financials."

Facebook wasn't the only person on Stewart's list. He also blamed Goldman Sachs for finding yet another loophole to avoid SEC regulations. He even went so far as to unfriend them on Facebook.

"Oh Goldman," Stewart sighed. "Is there any regulation's intent you can't subvert?"

WATCH:

Comments

[Vegan Girl]

04:35 AM on 02/23/2011

I don't know when Jon Stewart made his choice to become court jester from truth teller. Maybe he always was a "centrist" out for himself.... But I don't look to him for good things ever since his reaction to the war crime leaks. I should have known right at the time of all the distasteful false equivalences prior to the rally for sanity.

[rainkitty]

03:05 AM on 01/12/2011

Goldman Sachs and the Facebook Pump and Dump
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25478.html

[YouDontWantMeHere]

07:26 PM on 01/10/2011

Hay Noj! did ya get my message?

[jwilson1]

12:56 PM on 01/10/2011

GOLDMAN
SACKS

[gschneider7]

05:56 PM on 01/09/2011

Fair enough, point taken

[DailyShowSpecial]

08:04 AM on 01/09/2011

Huffpost, not sure why you are so busy making yourself irrelevant. However, this excessive censoring by your moderators should stop. You want to let the people be heard or not? By censoring you are helping to cover up the way people truly feel. Guess that is your agenda. I seriously dislike you acting as 'big brother'. You're doing us all a disservice. See thousands of people who aren't being allowed to post in regard to shooting of Gifford in Arizona. Why don't you let us determine if posts are reasonable or not? Do you feel we need you to protect us from harm? If you are so almighty, how come you didn't prevent the shooting to begin with?

[VintageMary]

04:40 AM on 01/09/2011

Oh Stewart, Americas best newsman!

[isb782]

02:20 AM on 01/08/2011

Thank god I do not own a face book account or Twitter.

[robinhood1]

09:17 PM on 01/08/2011

Neither do I.

[MagicalPossibilities]

10:13 PM on 01/07/2011

One more reason to NEVER have a Facebook account. Did you see the shifty look on Zuckerberg's face during that interview? Made my skin crawl...

[big tom]

08:05 PM on 01/07/2011

if goldman sacs wants in... i want out.. they are theives

[otop016]

09:16 PM on 01/07/2011

You wouldn't qualify anyway...you're safe.

[PhineasGage730]

11:16 PM on 01/08/2011

I think he means out of facebook.

[flyoverguy]

06:01 PM on 01/07/2011

I find it increasingly difficult to distinguish Huffingtonpost from The Onion.

[realitytrumpsbull]

05:44 PM on 01/07/2011

Facebook is OK, but it's not the ONLY place where you can network and post messages back and forth with friends/relatives.

Data mining: Facebook has been a point of controversy, about what information they collect from/on the public, and what they do with it, but if you think about the situation more largely, they're an extension of the internet itself, which gets data-mined all day long. Opening any website on a standard computer opens up your system to whatever information the web designers might see fit to collect about the computer, and by extension, you. Then, you get into the wonderful world of hacking, and the basic realization that people with advanced degrees in computer science can open up probably just about any operating system like you'd open up a can of soup and pour out all that chunky chicken noodle information at broadband speeds. So, if you're really worried about Facebook, then you should also be worried about the internet, and probably not use it at all. The web was invented by The Government, and they probably data-mine it all day long.  The BIG 'social network' is society itself, and Facebook and similar websites just a virtual extension of it.

[esquilax]

02:06 AM on 01/08/2011

Not really. You don't "sign on" to the internet with one set of privacy rules, that then they get updated to weaken your privacy later. There are no privacy rules on the internet, but those companies that propose to keep your information for a purpose ought not be given a free pass changing their minds about how to use it.

Their business model involves making money, from information (stupidly) given to them from their users, in ways they said they originally wouldn't. The weakening will continue unless people dump them.

[skymuffin]

03:05 PM on 01/08/2011

Yeah, I closed my account. If a friend was playing a game and sent me a pig, or wanted me to take some quiz, the layers of privacy, or perceived privacy were s.tripped away because you'd have to sign an agreement to let third-parties have access to your info. It was all a little too creepy. So, dinosaur I will remain.

[KillgoreTrout43]

05:44 PM on 01/07/2011

OK, what was the problem with my reply to Prescott Auburn??? There were 0 violations of comment policy.

[KillgoreTrout43]

05:42 PM on 01/07/2011

Prescott;

Yeah, I'm very glad that Stewart and Colbert are around. It's good to know that there are at least two people who have access to such a broad audience, promoting sanity and fairness.
Kurt is my favorite novelist. I think he was the 20th century Mark Twain.

[theaetetus]

05:38 PM on 01/07/2011

goldman sachs and facebook if thats not a dodgy alliance i dont know what is.

[StephenJK]

02:30 AM on 01/08/2011

Like GS and the Corexit 9500 company Nalco just months prior to the DWH explosion. This company defines creepiness.