Facebook has changed its name to Meta

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that he had created the parent company to better represent all of its operations. The names of the various services do not change.

The founder of the tech giant, accusing many elected officials of putting profits in front of humans, chose the new blue logo in the ancient Greek “meta” – “beyond” – “always build” and shape. A parallel “8” resembles the infinity symbol in mathematics.

“We learned a lot from facing so many problems,” he said, adding that it was time to learn the lessons “to build the next chapter”.

He just spent an hour and a half introducing “Metavers”.

According to him, “metawares” (French for the meta-universe) represent the future of the Internet after the age of computers and smart phones. In particular, the public has access to interact, work or play through augmented reality glasses and virtual reality headsets.

But this epithet change has been interpreted as a maneuver to distract opponents of the California group involved in scandals ranging from data privacy to respect for competition law.

Metastasis

The NGO of anti-Facebook activists responded sarcastically, “Facebook’s real supervisory board” (“The Real Facebook Monitoring Board”) responded, “The name change does not change reality: Facebook destroys our democracy and is a major trader for misinformation and hatred.”

Twitter is full of sarcasm and critical reactions.

“Meta” means “we are a cancer of democracy, it can be turned into a surveillance and propaganda machine to support authoritarian regimes and destroy civil society and make profits!” “, For example elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, accept the American left star.

Although the parent company Alphabet was created in 2015 to oversee its experimental and innovative activities, others suggest that Google remains in the minds of the public as Google.

The anger of officials and civil society over Facebook has increased in recent weeks, thanks to the revelation of Whistleblower, Francis Hougen, which shows that the group has chosen to ignore some dangerous-toxic content on Instagram for teens, misinformation damages democracy, and so on. – In order to maintain its profits.

The company, which is already the target of numerous investigations and lawsuits, is also facing a new investigation by the US government based on internal documents submitted to the SEC by the Stock Exchange Authority of the former engineer country.

On Tuesday, Facebook asked all its employees to keep all documents for several years to respond to legal requests.

“Not prisoners”

In his presentation, Mark Zuckerberg spoke very little about his company concerns and spoke only in an abstract or positive way.

“The last few years have taught me a lot about humility,” he said.

“I have come to the conclusion that lack of choice and high prices can stifle innovation, prevent people from building new products and delay the entire digital economy,” he continued – built around the iPhone on his neighbor Apple and its ecosystem.

The billionaire specifically expanded his focus on metavars, which must “give a deeper sense of the existence of others”.

He painted the future ultra-immersive universe, evoking science fiction novels where real people and objects are combined with avatars and virtual images, thanks to new cutting-edge technologies.

“You’ll be able to text by visualizing your fingers as you write the message, which is awesome,” he said enthusiastically.

Meta wants to invest billions in the coming years to build an ecosystem that represents “one billion users, hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce and millions of jobs for creators and developers”.

Mark Zuckerberg also emphasized the need to create programs that allow interoperability – such as creating a garment in one place and using it in another – and ensuring that users remain “prisoners” to the world or the platform.