CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress this week, 100 cardboard cutouts of Zuckerberg stand outside the U.S. Capitol, making a statement of their own.
Advocacy group Avaaz is behind the display, which shows Mark Zuckerberg with the phrase, "Fix Fakebook" on a t-shirt.
Avaaz is using the cutouts to call attention to what the groups say are hundreds of millions of fake accounts still spreading disinformation on Facebook.
The cardboard cutouts were made by Charlotte company Heritage Printing. The company received an order for 100 cutouts of Mark Zuckerberg last Thursday, not knowing exactly what they would be used for or how they would be displayed.
President and CEO of Heritage Printing Joe Gass said, “To get a request for a hundred of those at one time is quite a large number. We weren’t quite sure what they were going to do with those.”
Gass said the company went to work by printing and cutting out the life-size versions of Mark Zuckerberg and shipped them to Washington, D.C. by Sunday.
Gass said his son saw the cardboard cutouts on the news. He then realized it was his company that was behind the display.
"We do a lot of things every day and maybe even more profound things, but this really just went crazy,” Gass said.
Heritage Printing was founded in 1977 and became a presence in Charlotte in 2008. It also has locations in Maryland and Washington, D.C.