The CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg announced the parent company name change of Facebook on the 28th of October. The company will now be known as “Meta”. The taste of Facebook and all of its misdoings lingers on, however. Facebook continues spreading misleading information among other problems. People still do not have a clear understanding of the name “Meta” which later was explained means “after” or “beyond”.
The rebrand came in an attempt to not only cover up misdoings but to attract more young people. Recently, people are noticing that Facebook, along with other companies they own, like WhatsApp and Instagram, have been focusing on “Profits over Safety” by advertising ads on products that can be harmful to young people, and fast-tracking algorithms that have been proven damaging to democracy, for example, the ability of the Jan. 6th insurrection fomenting posts to spread. Frances Haugen, a former employee in Facebook, started to leak documents showing to the public that Facebook and their employees only cared about profit rather than safety. Ms. Haugen started to speak to British lawmakers to regulate Facebook.
With the transition to a VR world, Mark Zuckerberg hopes to lead away from the problems the company is facing with ideas to change their whole identity with this one big meta move. The company commits to having a place where people can talk online and can easily meet other people.
Recently, the company has changed its logo to an infinity symbol for Meta that can now be seen on many apps that are affiliated with the Facebook company. With their new change of style, Zuckerberg wants to move away from mobile devices and start working on the emerging virtual reality world.
With Zuckerberg entering the metaverse he intends to engage his audience with video games, and work since Facebook has had experience in the metaverse field. Only a year ago Facebook released a VR headset called the Oculus Quest 2 where people can come together, talk, and play games. With the Oculus Quest 2 being the build-up to a new chapter in Zuckerberg’s VR world, it is now possible to remotely have meetings in a single room in the VR space.
Mark Zuckerberg displayed a new product at a Congressional hearing, Horizon Workrooms, a virtual conference room where people could interact with their colleagues and work on projects that could be done in an office. (While Horizon workrooms are a place for work, Mark Zuckerberg intends to engage the users in video games as well) Zuckerberg also revealed he would talk with several game companies to add to their new VR workspaces like BeatSaber and many more to be revealed.
With the news, Zuckerberg is showing that people can slowly start to look away from the problems and begin to look at new horizons.