John Oliver reminds viewers that non-English speakers have that one conspiracy nut uncle, too

When your family’s chosen messaging app has even laxer fact-checking than YouTube or Facebook, then your family is in serious trouble. That’s the message John Oliver attempted to introduce into the overflowing sewerage system that is the internet on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, focusing more specifically on services like WhatsApp, WeChat, and KakaoTalk, all of which are especially popular in non-English speaking American diaspora communities. Noting that Facebook, which owns the globally far-reaching WhatsApp, apparently takes the historically Oscars-like approach that, “If it doesn’t happen in English, it doesn’t really matter,” Oliver showed how, for many immigrant communities, the daily flow of bullshit swamps them essentially unchecked and unfiltered.

The reasons for this are many (companies not giving a crap being high on the list), but Oliver, as is his way, shone a light on a serious, looming problem most people didn’t know they had. So, thanks for that, John. But, as Oliver noted, with reputable news in their native language limited, many people turn to some seriously out-there sources for information about, say, a deadly pandemic. People like one Nguy Vu, a Vietnamese broadcaster who calls himself King Radio, and whose Alex Jones-styled misinformation and outright dangerous lunacy are often just left running in the background of many Vietnamese households in America, like an easy listening station that wants to kill you.

Oliver stressed the uncanny similarities between Sandy Hook-denier Jones (who has been banned by YouTube, at last), and King Radio (who has most definitely not), right down to the conspiratorial couple’s shared reliance on relentless hucksterism to sustain their malicious media empires. In addition to life-endangering misinformation about everything from mask-wearing (which works) to vaccines (which also work), both blowhards hawk off-brand viagra to their sweatily paranoid male viewers, while Nguy Vu touts the benefits of a special skin cream—made by his cousin. “Unless his cousin is named Steve Clinique,” stated Oliver emphatically, “I do not want any creams from that individual.”

As for what’s to be done about King Radio and others of his ilk who send your least-favorite racist uncle scurrying to share unverified and hazardous scuttlebutt on your family’s WhatsApp group chat, Oliver noted that putting pressure on companies to actually give a shit about what their product is doing is a start. He showed how public pressure on WhatsApp in India (where misinformation has led to people being straight-up murdered), has forced that company to wage a PR campaign against itself, essentially. Which is nice, although the corporate strategy of, as Oliver puts it, “saying, “Look, some of what’s on our service is dangerous nonsense, and if you could help clean it up for us, that’d be great,” is sort of passing the buck to already-beleaguered family members who have to deal with that least-favorite family member’s daily barrage of unvetted, unsourced horsecrap.

As ever, however, Last Week Tonight is here to help, as Oliver pointed such exhausted friends and family toward the new, HBO-funded site, bettermorningmessages.com. Noting how many immigrant aunties and uncles love nothing more that to send garishly chipper good morning memes through these services, Oliver and his staff have worked up a series of similar memes in various languages with messages like, “Good morning! Take every chance you get in life, and rethink sharing news from a bullshit source!” (The blinking hearts, dinosaur, and passenger jet in the background really bring the massage home.) Or, specifically targeted to King Radio, the site offers the English and Vietnamese options of the musical video message (complete with dancing dogs and astronauts), “Good morning, fam! Remember, if someone calls themself ‘King’ and offers you dick pills made by their cousin, they’re probably not the most reputable source in the world!” Sound advice in any language.