HBO's 'Silicon Valley' Adds A Facebook Easter Egg To Its Season 5 Opening (Hint: It Involves Russia)
Silicon Valley returned for its fifth season with a blink-and-you'll miss-it jab at Facebook. The HBO series made a pun at the social media app's current media scrutiny involving the Russians.
Season 5 Opener
The show is no stranger when it comes to making comedic jabs in its ever-changing opening credits and the Season 5 opener is no different. The title sequence shows familiar tech company logos including HP, YouTube, Oracle, Intel, Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook, and Uber. As the camera pans over the cityscape, the Facebook logo briefly flickers to reveal Russian Cyrillic script lettering that spells out ГДÇЭБФФЖ.
Fans who tuned in to the Silicon Valley Season 5 premiere, "Grow Fast or Die Slow," on Sunday night shared a clip of the said opener. Although the lettering does not translate to Facebook in Russian since the word means nonsense in Russian. Although the actual translation for Facebook would spell as Фейсбук, still fans noticed the subtle reference to the Facebook scandal in 2016.
During the Silicon Valley opening credits, the Facebook logo flipped from English to Russian. First-rate burn by one of the best series on TV. pic.twitter.com/zvh9ZPd3td — Adam Best (@adamcbest) March 26, 2018
The Easter Egg is a jab at Facebook's alleged involvement with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It refers to the fake news allegation that Russian agents used the social media platform to influence Donald Trump's victory.
The Silicon Valley Season 5 opening credits take a jab at the ongoing tumult at the tech company. Facebook is under increased media and congressional scrutiny over its alleged role in Kremlin propaganda after multiple agencies concluded in a report last year that Russia wants to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process."
Data Breach
Silicon Valley could have produced the opener last fall while the scandal was still dominating news media. However, the timing of the show's return to HBO could not be more perfect when Facebook has come under fire again for data breach.
The tech company is under scrutiny for not protecting its users' privacy after it came to light that Cambridge Analytica, the data company hired by the Trump campaign, gained access to more than 50 million profiles without users' permission. The company allegedly used a Facebook quiz to scrape the data.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has since addressed the latest scandal and admitted that he and his team are still trying to figure out what exactly happened.
"We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again," Zuckerberg said.
