Social media remained glued to updates from the hotly anticipated congressional hearing on America's leading tech CEOs, which took place on Wednesday, July 29.
As Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook tackled sharp jabs for alleged abuse of their market power from the US House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, netizens kept a close watch, mostly to churn out memes and other funny content.
Subsequently, a video clip emerged on Twitter that showed Zuckerberg grilling briskets and ribs in his backyard while responding to tough queries by the lawmakers via video conferencing.
In the footage that now has more than 5.4 lakh views, the Facebook CEO is seen giving barbeque tips to the members of the panel and asking them about their dinner plans.
Have a look at the video here:
Sweet Baby Rays pic.twitter.com/q9mERev845
— Ramp Capital (@RampCapitalLLC) July 29, 2020
The truth behind the video
While it is certainly fun to watch Zuckerberg discuss the procedure of grilling meat amid the intense showdown with Democrats and Republicans, the fact is that nothing of this sort actually happened.
The Twitter user who shared the clip has very smoothly clubbed together footages from Wednesday's hearing and an old Facebook live in which Zuckerberg showcased his smokehouse.
Here is the original clip where Zuckerberg smoked briskets and ribs:
Smokin' these meats today who wants to come over pic.twitter.com/OMlIfKSLuu
— Chad Coleman (@HashtagChad) July 4, 2018
Moreover, Zuckerberg wore a completely different outfit while giving his virtual testimony to the antitrust panel and not the one that can be seen in the parody video.
Below is a screenshot from the US Congress hearing:
Thus, it can be concluded that the video that has been giving a good laugh to the netizens is an edited one and is purely meant for entertainment purposes.
At the Big Tech hearing, Zuckerberg faced fire over Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, a pervasive strategy of copying competitors' features, selling user data to third parties and the forest fire analogy of how fake news and conspiracy theories go wild on the mighty platform.
In his responses, Zuckerberg admitted that his company has "certainly adapted features that others have led in" but also countered that its moves were not anti-competitive.
