Facebook’s renaming to Meta has been criticized in many places
It was not a week ago that the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Oculus and WhatsApp decided to rename itself to Meta. The reason put forward by (formerly) Facebook was to focus on a digital world called Metaverse, in which reality and digital life are supposed to merge. For critics, however, it was an attempt to wash one’s own vest.
The reaction varied depending on the group of people, particularly in the United States, politicians expressed their displeasure by posting on the social network Twitter. The democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez alluded to the term metastases and called the company a cancer for democracy.
The democrat has long been a critic of the Zuckerberg empire. Nevertheless, she is not alone with her testimony. Senator Marsha Blackburn reminded Zuckerberg that a name change would not change anything the company has committed, Senator Elizabeth Warren said that the fact that the company is a monopoly would not be done away with.
It is not surprising that the criticism is so strong. On the one hand, it has long been discussed in the United States that Meta should possibly be broken up in order to allow more competition and thus promote innovation. In the last few years the group has used its power many times to collect a large proportion of the profits.
On the other hand, there are the papers published by Frances Haugen, which do not put the company in a good light. More and more details are being brought to light from the massive publication, but Meta does what Facebook has already done before: keep silent and allow as little transparency as possible.
Therefore, Meta first has to show whether it is a future-oriented company or whether it is simply the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Past scandals teach us that the second option is more likely, but one day Meta may get the bill for its own behavior.
Via The Verge
2021-11-02: A small mistake was corrected, the politician Ocasio-Cortez is a Democrat, not a Republican.
