PR Companies in Australia love it and brands think it’s the b all end all for exposure, despite some claiming Facebook is “dreadful blight on society”. Now
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has mocked Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to rebrand Facebook turning the online site into a ‘metaverse,’.
He has described Facebook as a ‘dystopian corporate dictatorship.’
Facebook has been heavily mocked for their rebranding attempt with users joking ‘why don’t they call it wokebook,’ many claim it is a move by Facebook to distance itself from a series of embarrassing scandals.
One commentator called the plan ‘the old rebrand trick’, in reference to other companies that have changed their names to avoid scrutiny, while others suggested new names for the company, with ‘Fakebook’ and ‘Wokebook’ being popular choices.
Facebook are desperate, as they come under threat from various Governments for breaches of privacy and the way they try to craft political debate and shape people’s lives.
In September, Facebook unveiled Ray-Ban Stories glasses, which have two cameras and three microphones built in. The glasses capture audio and video so that wearers can record their experiences and interactions claims Facebook.
Observers claim it’s just another way for Facebook to capture private information and then sell it to advertisers.
Facebook management now want the ‘metaverse’ to be a future version of the internet, where users use virtual reality and augmented reality devices to enter virtual worlds.
Dorsey retweeted a post from a user that read: ‘the word “metaverse” was coined by Neal Stephenson in the book “snowcrash” and it originally described a virtual world owned by corporations where end users were treated as citizens in a dystopian corporate dictatorship. What if Neal was right.’
As Dorsey retweeted the post, he added: ‘NARRATOR: He was.’
The ‘metaverse’ concept is one Facebook appears to be betting its future on, including hiring 10,000 EU staff to develop the shared worlds and technology.
The rebrand would see the creation of a parent company, overseeing Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and others, similar to the moves Google took in launching Alphabet to oversee its brands, including YouTube and Nest.
The firm’s original, flagship social media site and app – Facebook – is expected to keep its moniker, but Facebook, the parent company will get a new name.
The reason that Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg wants to rebrand is because the Facebook name is “tarnished” “On the nose” and “corrupted” claim observers.
US officials recently announced that Facebook had agreed to pay up to $14.25 million to settle civil claims by the government that the company discriminated against workers.
And in the UK, the company was fined $70 million after failing to provide enough important information to the competition regulator investigating the firm’s takeover of GIF sharing platform Giphy.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a probe into the acquisition in June last year, shortly after the deal was announced, over concerns about a ‘substantial lessening of competition’.
Facebook has also admitted users can share information about how to enter countries illegally and about people smuggled on social media platforms.
The admission comes as one US Attorney General urges the Department of Justice to investigate the firm over its ‘facilitation’ of illegal migration.
It was accused of facilitating the spread of misinformation during the 2016 US presidential election, prompting a series of congressional hearings and policy changes.
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion for allowing 87 million US profiles to be harvested for information used for political advertising by Cambridge Analytica.
Some of the advertising was used to help the 2016 campaign of former president Donald Trump.
Most recently, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen released a trove of documents dubbed the ‘Facebook Files’.
The internal research suggests that Facebook promoted divisiveness as a way to keep people on the site, with Haugen saying the documents showed the company had failed to protect young users.
It also showed that the company knew Instagram harmed young girls’ body image and even tried to brainstorm ways to appeal to toddlers by ‘exploring playdates as a growth lever.’