Why Facebook officially changes corporate name to ‘Meta’ ─Mark Zuckerberg

*Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer of the global tech giant discloses ‘it’s time to adopt a new brand that encompasses everything we do’

*The name change does not really change anything, say stakeholders, critics

Gbenga Kayode | ConsumerConnect

Apparently fazed by troublesome headlines regarding its operational issues in recent times, Facebook has undergone a brand refresh, changing its corporate name to Meta.

ConsumerConnect reports Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the global tech giant, had announced the change late Thursday, October 28, 2021.

Besides the Facebook social media platform, the technology company owns Instagram and WhatsApp.

Zuckerburg said: “It’s time to adopt a new brand that encompasses everything we do.”

While that may be a valid reason, that after all Google changed its corporate name to Alphabet, observers however noted that the Facebook brand has been an object of criticism since 2017, agency report said.

At that time, it revealed that users’ personal data had been used in an unauthorised way by a political marketing firm.

Ever since then, the criticism has only become more intense from both the political left and the right, report stated.

US Democrats, for instance, were said to have accused the Big Tech of allowing the distribution of misinformation, and Republicans have claimed that the platform censors conservative viewpoints.

Leaked internal research

A Facebook former employee, September 2021, leaked internal documents showing, among other things, that Facebook Executives were well aware that the social pressures created by Instagram were having a harmful effect on teenage girls.

Mike Davis, Founder and President of the Internet Accountability Project and longtime Facebook critic, said the name change does not really change anything.

Davis stated: “Facebook is following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco after the industry was exposed for its toxic and deadly impact on society.”

“Philip Morris got caught preying on kids, so they became Altria. Facebook got caught preying on kids, so they became Meta.

“But consumers and legislators should make no mistake: this is the same company that lies to its users, Congress and government regulators.”

The President of Internet Accountability Project also clarified that Facebook, and many other “Big Tech” companies, should be broken up into smaller firms.

In terms of business alignment, for its part, Facebook ─ now Meta ─ is presenting the name change as a fundamental realignment of its business, casting itself as a “social technology company” that will bring together its apps and technology under a single brand.

It was gathered the name is taken from the word “metaverse,” which is a virtual reality environment where users can interact with others in a purely digital space.

The company in a statement said: “The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world.”

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