The Chaser has taken a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book, with a strategy of sharing untrue and provocative posts reaping similar virality to some of the US President’s recent social media activity.

The post, titled “‘Social media should not fact check posts’, says child molester Mark Zuckerberg,” was viewed by 1.2 million people in under 12 hours, crashing The Chaser’s website.

“Following our recent success we’re thinking of making an offer to buy out Facebook actually,” Charles Firth of The Chaser tells The Brag.

It followed a week in which social media fact-checking has been a hot topic, after Twitter began fact-checking Donald Trump’s tweets, resulting in the POTUS signing an executive order aimed at removing some of the legal protections afforded to social media platforms.

Rather than standing up for fellow social giant Twitter, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg instead told Fox News that Facebook should be moving away from regulating online speech.

“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” he told the right-wing news site. “Private companies probably shouldn’t be – especially these platform companies shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”

As for The Chaser, it was an opportunity that was too good to miss.

“We’ve been trading in fake news for 20 years — and have no integrity— so in some ways we’re the experts at it,” Firth says. “Perhaps we could teach Zuckerberg a thing or two. Facebook looks like a pretty shoddy, disreputable website. I’m sure it wouldn’t cost that much.”

They weren’t the only Australian satire site to take advantage of Zuckerberg’s comments.

The Shovel took advantage of the situation with; ‘Mark Zuckerberg – Dead At 36 – Says Social Media Sites Should Not Face Check Posts’.

There’s been plenty to satirise in the last couple of weeks for The Chaser, who recently launched their new podcast The Chaser Report.

Last week they paid tribute to the retiring Alan Jones with an audio package containing some of his most entertaining blow-ups behind a microphone.

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