The Hill: Facebook faces difficult road despite rebrand

October 30, 2021 Media

Facebook’s rebrand as Meta has done little so far to assuage its critics or turn down the political heat focused on the Silicon Valley giant.

The makeover of the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 comes amid historic scrutiny of the social media behemoth, which has long been in the crosshairs of lawmakers and privacy hawks.

Facebook has been grabbing negative headlines for well over a month stemming from documents shared by a whistleblower, Frances Haugen. More than a dozen outlets this week released stories on the files, dubbed the Facebook Papers, painting a picture of a company consistently placing profits above user safety.

Congress has taken note and vowed to take action on regulating the company following a hearing with Haugen earlier this month.

Facebook’s expansion into virtual reality spaces, and the new branding to go along with it, is also doing nothing to quell critics’ concerns over the company’s market power dominance.

“Meta is very clear in the branding, this is a corporation that wants you to know it aims to control everything and be everything. I think meta is exactly what you would name a company that needs to be broken up,” said Robyn Shapiro, director of communications at the American Economic Liberties Project.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Facebook over allegations of anticompetitive acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. At the same time, Congress is looking to revamp antitrust laws to aid regulators’ ability to go after tech giants, including Facebook.

“The police don’t care if you put on a new outfit. So fundamentally, this isn’t going to change much,” Shapiro said.

“The legal case against Facebook is rock solid. It has been for years. And I don’t think branding is going to do much of anything to change that,” she added.