Mark Zuckerberg Announces He’s Renaming Facebook to ‘Meta’

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Joint Hearing in Washington on April 10, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Facebook Inc. on Oct. 28 is officially changing its name to Meta, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, coming after the social media giant recently endured leaks and so-called whistleblower complaints about its companywide practices.

“Building social apps will always be important for us, and there’s a lot more to build. But increasingly, it’s not all we do. In our DNA, we build technology to bring people together. The metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people, just like social networking was when we got started,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter posted online.

In an accompanying news release, Facebook stated it would change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS, effective Dec. 1.

Zuckerberg unveiled the name for the company that oversees Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.

“The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together—and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world,” the company stated.

Zuckerberg’s letter hinted that the company would continue to branch out into other ventures outside its social media platforms, writing that “our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today, let alone in the future.”

In July, Zuckerberg first said he wanted Facebook to ultimately become a “metaverse company,” referring to its efforts to combine virtual and augmented reality technologies to create a new online realm. The move is sure to draw significant criticism from those who view the policies employed by Facebook and other social media companies as too intrusive and prone to censor dissenting voices.

Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Facebook and Zuckerberg have faced leaks and internal criticism for how the company handled its content moderation. A report published by The Wall Street Journal, among others, revealed the existence of an internal Facebook study that argued that websites such as Breitbart, Western Journal, and The Epoch Times should have their reach suppressed on the platform.

Zuckerberg recently said that leaked documents that were provided to the Journal and other news outlets paint a false picture of the company.

“We are seeing a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” he said during an earnings call on Oct. 25.

Other reports showed that the company’s own data suggested that Facebook’s Instagram platform had become a harmful place for teenagers, namely teenage girls. And for years now, Republicans have pushed to end Section 23o of the 1996 federal Communications Decency Act amid complaints the company has banned or suppressed conservative voices.

At the social media giant’s annual developer event on Oct. 28, Zuckerberg appeared to make reference to the leaks and negative reports.

“I know that some people will say that this isn’t a time to focus on the future, and I want to acknowledge that there are important issues to work on in the present. There always will be,” he said. “So for many people, I’m just not sure there ever will be a good time to focus on the future. But I also know that there are a lot of you who feel the same way that I do.”