BY MAX MCAULIFF, STAFF WRITER
A couple of weeks ago, Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would be undergoing a rebrand. Facebook Inc. has been under fire in recent years for various reasons, including data breaches, how they go about collecting user data, and how they deal with hate speech on the social networking app Facebook.
Zuckerberg announced that Facebook Inc., the parent company which operates the social networking app Facebook, would rebrand itself as Meta. Meanwhile, Facebook as a social networking app will remain the same.
Other companies that Facebook Inc. owns, like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR, will now operate under the Meta umbrella.
Meta is more than just a rebrand for Facebook Inc. It’s a venture into what is called the metaverse. According to the New York Post, the metaverse is “a shared virtual world environment which people can access via the Internet.” The metaverse ranges from playable characters in a gaming world to virtual and augmented reality worlds in which users can buy virtual land using cryptocurrencies.
While rebranding to Meta and diving into the metaverse is a step forward into a new sector for the former Facebook Inc., it’s also an excuse for Facebook Inc. to run from its problems.
The company is using its rebrand as Meta to try and make people forget about all the suspect things Facebook Inc. has done.
Mark Zuckerberg has testified in front of Congress five times. The company has been hacked multiple times, exposing millions of users’ data. A Buzzfeed report after the 2016 election revealed that false news stories outperformed real news stories during the election.
In 2018 another story broke that alleged Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested data from Facebook users for ad targeting during the 2016 election. In 2020 Wahlberg said that Facebook would not fact-check politicians’ posts on Facebook. This move was widely criticized and made it seem as if Facebook learned nothing from the 2016 election and the spread of misinformation.
In 2019 Facebook set a record for the biggest FTC fine a tech company has ever faced for their violations of user privacy. Facebook had to pay $5 billion in fines.
Anyone who has seen the movie “The Social Network” about the creation of Facebook and the rise of Zuckerberg knows that Facebook has been steeped in controversy since its creation at Harvard in 2003.
While “The Social Network” is a dramatization of real-life events, one thing viewers take away from the movie is that Zuckerberg and Facebook have been steeped in drama and scandals since the beginning.
Facebook Inc.’s rebranding as Meta is an attempt to disassociate the company from scandals of the past. However, the rebrand is only delaying Facebook’s demise.
