![]() The troubles continued in 2018 after a massive data breach involving a British consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica. These were a wake-up call for the company to set up better regulatory measures. In 2017, despite trying hard to restore its image, Facebook kept facing trouble with several reports of posts containing abuse, harassment, and hate speech. The same year, Facebook also launched Reactions which allowed users to select from several emojis alongside the Like button. To counter this, the platform introduced a new feature that allowed users to flag fake posts and pledged to improve the algorithm, but these efforts barely made any difference. Although the company had always been in the middle of lawsuits and accusations, things became more intense in 2016 when it faced heavy criticism for being used to spread fake news. “Having conquered the Earth, they now want to conquer the virtual metaverse.Along with fame and money, Facebook also received hate and trouble. “This is yet another world that they want to conquer,” says Chander. I’m sure not everybody would be so thrilled about the home space.” “It makes a lot of sweeping assumptions about how people live their lives. “The whole presentation of the metaverse is so utopian and naive,” says Bucher. The company has struggled with outages on its key apps that removed the ability to communicate for large parts of the world in recent months – and if such a thing were to happen in an all-pervasive VR universe like the metaverse, the consequences could be huge. One issue with Meta trying to be the sole company underpinning the metaverse is the pivotal role it would play in our lives if its vision of the future becomes a reality. “I think this is Facebook trying to pretend that there aren’t strong headwinds, and carrying on as if those headwinds didn’t exist,” he says. “All the bad press and political battles it is currently fighting have to do with its social networking products, so launching something entirely new – in their minds – is a way to completely rebrand and start fresh, without changing much with the existing problematic products,” says Taina Bucher at the University of Oslo, Norway, and author of the book Facebook.Ĭhander sees it as an attempt to overlook, rather than overwrite, the issues raised by the Facebook Papers. Some have seen the new name as a way to distract from this narrative. There has been a steady drip of negative stories following the release of the Facebook Papers, internal documents highlighting issues with the company, secreted out of the firm by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Read more: Trump ban decision shows the limits of a Facebook ‘Supreme Court’ĭoesn’t Facebook – sorry, Meta – have bigger things to worry about? “Is Meta going to simply provide the tools rather than be the gatekeeper? I doubt that they would relinquish anything that might compromise their position as the definitive advertisement provider of the metaverse, for instance,” says Van Kleek. Meta did make oblique references to Apple in its announcement, saying it wanted to avoid a single company restricting what you can do and charging high fees, but Max Van Kleek at the University of Oxford is sceptical that Meta itself will wield control over its metaverse. They want others to be prisoner on their platform.” “They don’t want to be prisoner on other people’s platform. “My suspicion is that this is about owning the operating system of the future, and Facebook’s experience of being an app on other people’s – rivals’ – operating systems,” says Anupam Chander at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC. Read more: Facebook vs Australia and the new battle to cut big tech down to sizeįor one thing, Meta doesn’t want to be known solely as a social media platform. The metaverse unveiled by the company in August looks like The Sims or another immersive world: the 2003 video game Second Life. “In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter announcing Facebook’s rebranding as Meta.īut it is in the future. The name was chosen to echo the key product that Zuckerberg hopes Facebook – now Meta – will be represented by: the metaverse, the name for a shared online 3D virtual space that a number of companies are interested in creating as a sort of future version of the internet. Facebook (the company) even changed the logo outside its building on 28 October. But the company that produces and maintains them will now be called Meta – similar to Google’s 2015 corporate restructuring into a parent company called Alphabet. It is important to note that Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram will all be keeping their names.
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