Facebook is bleeding users and credibility as it continues to face scrutiny for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which dominated headlines last week.

One major point of contention is Facebook's acquisition of users' contact lists.

But in a statement issued this week, Facebook subtly rebuked the outrage, explaining they disclose their practice when users sign up:

"The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it's a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts…

"Contact uploading is optional. People are expressly asked if they want to give permission to upload their contacts from their phone – it's explained right there in the apps when you get started. People can delete previously uploaded information at any time and can find all the information available to them in their account and activity log from our Download Your Information tool." [emphasis added]

Facebook has been exploiting user data for quite some time, though it now faces heightened criticism in the context of Donald Trump's rise to power. But South Park, the long-running, highly-controversial adult animated series, actually offered biting commentary years ago on the subject of users signing away their rights.

In its Season 15 premiere, aired in 2011, the show poked fun at consumers' habit of agreeing to terms of service without ever reading the fine print. In a particularly grotesque South Park episode, the show imagines the now-deceased Steve Jobs kidnapping Apple users to be part of a "humancentiPad" experiment, attaching the users together "from mouth to anus."

The consumers used in the experiment are outraged and horrified as they wait in a jail cell. When Kyle, a main character, is also rounded up to be part of the humancentiPad, another woman asks him, "You agreed to the iTunes terms and conditions, too?"