The company formerly known as Facebook is betting its future on the metaverse, an unproven unreality.
Facebook suffered a $230bn wipeout in biggest one-day US stock plunge.
Meta’s stock fall marked the biggest slide in market value for a US public company.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be keen to coax the world into an alternate reality, but disappointing fourth-quarter results were quick to burst his metaverse bubble.
The metaverse refers to an array of shared spaces accessed via the internet.
Some use augmented reality, via smart glasses, though current platforms often look more like the inside of a video game than real life.
Serious money is sloshing around in there, with a patch of “real estate” in an online world called Decentraland changing hands for the equivalent of $2.4 million last week.
Facebook has been plagued by seemingly endless scandals – and experts believe the company’s major rebranding announcement could end up being yet another fail for the social media juggernaut.
Facebook knowingly allows toxic policies and business practices, and have prompted outrage from Congress, human rights groups and the public.
Facebook knew its products were stoking real-world violence and aggravating mental health problems, but refused to change them.
But while the company aggressively touted the new name as an exciting sign of things to come, many insiders believe it won’t be enough to distance Facebook from the serious crises it has faced over the years.
In February 2020, Facebook’s bombshell decision to temporarily ban Australian news from the platform sent shockwaves across the world, and sparked a massive boycott push.
The platform was also accused of spreading mass misinformation in the lead-up to the 2016 US election, and in 2017 it was revealed that hundreds of likely Russian fake Facebook accounts spent around $125,000 on ads during the election campaign.
Unless Facebook has serious plans to address at least some of its many issues, just changing a name is pointless.
