Facebook announces changing parent company name to ‘Meta’

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to keep names under rebranding

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday announced the parent company's name is being changed to "Meta" to represent a future beyond just its troubled social network.

The new handle comes as the social media giant tries to fend off one its worst crises yet and pivot to its ambitions for the "metaverse" virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future.

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will keep their names under the rebranding.

"We've learned a lot from struggling with social issues and living under closed platforms, and now it is time to take everything that we've learned and help build the next chapter," Zuckerberg said during an annual developers conference.

"I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. Our mission remains the same, still about bringing people together, our apps and their brands, they're not changing," he added.

Facebook critics pounced last week on a report that leaked the rebranding plans, arguing the company was aiming to distract from recent scandals and controversy.

An activist group calling itself The Real Facebook Oversight Board has warned that major industries like oil and tobacco had rebranded to "deflect attention" from their problems.

"Facebook thinks that a rebrand can help them change the subject," the group said last week, adding the "real issue" was the need for oversight and regulation.

Facebook has just announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the "metaverse," with Zuckerberg emerging as a leading promoter of the concept.

- Crisis mode -

The social media giant has been battling a fresh crisis since former employee Frances Haugen leaked reams of internal studies showing executives knew of their sites' potential for harm, prompting a renewed US push for regulation.

Facebook has been hit by major crises previously, but the current view behind the curtain of the insular company has fueled a frenzy of scathing reports and scrutiny from US regulators.

"Good faith criticism helps us get better, but my view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company," Zuckerberg said in an earnings call on Monday.

The Washington Post last month suggested that Facebook's interest in the metaverse is "part of a broader push to rehabilitate the company's reputation with policymakers and reposition Facebook to shape the regulation of next-wave Internet technologies."

Google rebranded itself as Alphabet in a corporate reconfiguration in 2015, but the online search and ad powerhouse remains its defining unit despite other operations such as Waymo self-driving cars and Verily life sciences.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook says EU antitrust probe invades employee privacy

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook on Monday said it is asking EU courts to review "exceptionally broad" requests by antitrust regulators there that would scoop up employees' personal information.

The US-based internet colossus maintained it has been cooperating with a European Commission antitrust investigation and will continue to do so, but that the wording of commission requests casts a net so wide it will haul in Facebook employees' private messages and more.

The leading social network expects to give the commission hundreds of thousands of documents, according to Facebook associate general counsel for competition Tim Lamb.

"The exceptionally broad nature of the commission's requests means we would be required to turn over predominantly irrelevant documents that have nothing to do with the commission's investigations," Lamb said in response to an AFP inquiry.

Those documents include "highly sensitive personal information such as employees' medical information; personal financial documents, and private information about family members of employees."

Facebook thinks such requests should be reviewed by EU courts, according to Lamb, and is asking the court to weigh in on broad search terms such as "applause" or "for free" that could easily be found in personal email messages or other exchanges way beyond the scope of antitrust matters.

Regulatory probes can involve requests for messages or documents bearing certain words or phrases, with those seeking information inclined to craft wide nets and those being queried wanting them narrowly targeted.

A highly anticipated US antitrust hearing, including top executives of four Big Tech firms, was originally set for Monday but has been postponed.

A notice filed by the House Judiciary Committee set no new date for the hearing titled "Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google."

The hearing would have conflicted with the memorial service for the late representative and civil rights leader John Lewis, who will lie in state in the US Capitol until Tuesday.

The antitrust hearing was called amid rising concerns over Big Tech dominance, which has become even more pronounced during the coronavirus pandemic and coincides with investigations at the federal and state levels into the online giants. 

Chief executives Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google and its parent firm Alphabet had agreed to participate in the session.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook rolls out Messenger Kids to 70 new countries

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Facebook on Wednesday rolled out its Messenger Kids application to 70 new countries, saying it can help children deal with the challenges of distance learning and isolation during the virus lockdowns.

The app, which is aimed at children under 13, will also be adding a "supervised friending" feature enabling parents to approve new connections, starting in the United States and gradually rolling out to other countries.

"With schools closed and people physically distancing, parents are turning to technology more than ever to help their kids connect with friends and family," Facebook's global head of safety Antigone Davis said in a blog post.

"Messenger Kids is a video chat and messaging app that helps kids connect with friends and family in a fun, parent-controlled space. Today, we're starting to roll out Messenger Kids to more countries and we’re adding new choices for parents to connect kids with friends."

Messenger Kids was launched in the United States in 2017 and expanded later to Canada and a handful of other countries, aiming at children too young for a Facebook account.

With the changes announced Wednesday, kids will be able to connect in groups to help facilitate learning, under parental supervision.

Parents in the US, Canada and Latin America can also allow their children to make their name and profile photo visible as part of the move to get more friends.

Kids will be able to initiate their own friend requests. Up to now these had to be initiated by the parents.

"Parents have told us they want to be able to give their kids more independence in managing their contact list while still maintaining parental supervision," Davis said.

"Previously, it was up to parents to invite and approve every contact for their child. Now with supervised friending, parents can choose to allow their kids to also accept, reject, add or remove contacts, while maintaining the ability to override any new contact approvals."

Some privacy activists have argued the app could be harmful to children by drawing them into online activity and potentially gathering data on them.

Facebook has argued that the app helps parents supervise their youngsters who would be using its platform without safeguards.

The new countries are in various regions of the world and include Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Indonesia and Tuvalu. No European countries are on the list.

Agence France-Presse