Can a Name Change Polish Facebook’s Image?
Facebook announced a new name for the umbrella company overseeing its core social network and other services: Meta! The rebrand aims to focus attention on Facebook’s ambition to become a “metaverse company.”
This is a privacy and consumer data story because it is the social network’s shoddy data stewardship that largely tainted Facebook’s image to begin with.
Facebook has been putting out reputational fire after fire since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when it came to light that political actors were using millions of users’ data, unbeknown to those users, to influence election outcomes.
Now, Facebook wants to be known for its ambitions to build the metaverse: a digital future where more and more of our daily social activities take place online.
The metaverse concept involves users working, gaming, and communicating in a virtual world, likely involving the use of VR headsets.
But that ambition just underscores that Facebook’s data stewardship, or lack thereof, will only get more important as the company puts more of our lives online — and under its eye. Accordingly, expect scrutiny of Facebook’s data security and privacy issues to intensify, not go away.
Could this restructuring really distance Facebook from controversy surrounding its rampant collection of user data, its role in creating political instability, and its damaging impact on young users?
Only truly reorienting its relationship with consumers around metaverse services and other products that don’t hinge on privacy violations and dangerous content will help Facebook shed its black hat image.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t bet on a rebrand leading consumers — or partners and the media — to forget Facebook’s privacy failures.
After all, nobody calls Google Alphabet, Zuck.