And, well, Facebook is called Meta now, and as journalist Kim Masters noted, “A Facebook by any other name is still a toxic waste site.”
“I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,” Facebook Meta head honcho Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview.
Of course, Facebook also might be trying to change up its branding because it’s constantly in the news for terrible things, such as its algorithm leading folks into extremism, turning a blind eye when it comes to user’s mental health, or its cozying up to right-wing pundits.
Gonna take awhile to get used to saying “He was radicalized in a META group”
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 28, 2021
Anyway, the name change and apparent reinvention led to lots of jokes and memes, as one might expect. I mean, what else could have possibly happened?
meta: referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.
— jack (@jack) October 28, 2021
Facebook is changing its name to Meta. "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "Meta!" "Meta who?" "Meta whistleblower & instead of improving the way we do business, we're gonna pretend to be a new business!"
— bettemidler (@BetteMidler) October 29, 2021
That baffling pitch came from none other than Facebook (ahem, Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a Tuesday interview that was released on Thursday.
In an attempt to communicate why people should buy into his deeply depressing vision of the metaverse, the clearly oblivious CEO pitched “one of the killer use cases:” texting someone while in the middle of a face-to-face conversation with another person.
Facebook (now Meta) planned to target children as young as 6 as users, say internal docs reported by @NBCNews.
A leaked blog post shows plans to target ages 6-9 and 10-12. A whistleblower says the company knows of its apps' harmful effects on kids, but puts profits over safety. pic.twitter.com/5SCvrfuoFs
— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 29, 2021
Facebook changing their corporate name to Meta isn’t going to change the underlying facts. They’re a monopoly. They crush the competition. And they refuse to control the spread of misinformation and harmful content on their site. It needs to break up.
That revelatory gem came about as Zuckerberg spoke of augmented reality glasses, which according to the Thursday Facebook Connect presentation, are one of the foundational building blocks of his version of metaverse. With Facebook’s (still in development) AR glasses, the pitch went, you can work or play with holograms representing people physically far away from you via the metaverse.
And, according to Zuckerberg, that’s not all the AR glasses will allow you to do.
“Although I do think that for augmented reality, for example, one of the killer use cases is basically going to be you’re going to have glasses and you’re going to have something like EMG [electromyography] on your wrist,” expounded Zuckerberg, “and you’re going to be able to have a message thread going on when you’re in the middle of a meeting or doing something else and no one else is even going to notice.”
In other words, Zuckerberg is implying that Facebook AR glasses might one day allow you to surreptitiously send and receive instant messages. Those messages, presumably, would be shown on the glasses lenses in a way that only the glasses wearer would be able to view. So, using the snazzy Facebook technology, the user could communicate with others discreetly via a sensor on their wrist while sitting in a conference, and no one would be the wiser.
Which, to be honest, sounds horrible for everyone concerned.
And that’s even before one considers the fact that, yes, people will definitely notice you’re not paying attention to them as your Facebook EMG sensor monitors “electrical motor nerve signals that travel through the wrist” and coverts them to emoji.
But then again, maybe that’s the exact kind of thing Zuckerberg’s long pined for? The ability to be physically or digitally present, but totally mentally tuned into his own private wavelength.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, apologized after using the VR session to showcase Facebook’s assistance efforts for Puerto Rico, which is rebounding from Hurricane Maria, but his happy avatar placed over the island’s damaged streets did not sit well with everyone.
The CEO has never been recognized for his social consciousness. Regrettably, for him, the metaverse does not yet provide reality checks.
