Facebook's Company Name Change Has Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Fuming
In case you missed it, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media company will be making a name change. According to CNBC, the company will now be called "Meta."
At the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference, Zuckerberg shared, "Today we are seen as a social media company, but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started" (via CNBC).
It seems that the social media giant is also looking to add to its brand. According to The Guardian, the term "meta" comes from the metaverse Zuckerberg claims he's making. The company will include Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the virtual reality brand that's in the works called Oculus.
Not everyone is a fan of Zuckerberg's new company, though. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said, "The fact that Zuckerberg has set his sights firmly on the so-called 'metaverse' while societies all over the world are scrambling to alleviate the myriad harms caused by his platforms just goes to show how out of touch Facebook is with real people" (via The Guardian).
But Ahmed isn't the only person disappointed in this metaverse — even members of the United States Congress are unhappy with Zuckerberg's plan.
AOC is not a fan of Facebook
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has been a critic of Zuckerberg's for a while now. She has been vocal about how she believes the social networking platform has caused problems for the United States' democracy (via The Verge).
"Just because a monopoly business happens to be online, that doesn't mean it's good," Ocasio-Cortez said in a 2019 tweet. "Facebook may have its own problems, but it's increasingly starting to look like our society (namely, our democracy) has a Facebook problem."
With the company's new name, AOC voiced her opinion on Twitter again, and she was not at all happy. "Meta as in 'we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society... for profit!'"
According to Business Insider, AOC's problem with the platform has to do with the amount of misinformation spread on the website and how fake news stories then impact democracy. Facebook has been a breeding ground for misinformation on everything from vaccine facts to election news, and AOC wants it to come to an end.