Hemming and Hawing: What's Wrong with Facebook – Progressive.org

Facebook is in the “Oh, sweetie” phase of its corporate timeline. That’s the phase that comes right after “extremist hotspot” and right before “certain implosion.” First, the heavy-duty Facebook Papers, which were leaked by former-employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen, hit the floor and put several cracks in the linoleum. That’s when Mark Zuckerberg decided that, instead of working swiftly to change how he runs the company, he would announce a surface-level rebrand: The company (but not the app) will now be called Meta. Every step in the nearly two decades of Facebook’s dominance has been guided by an incurable lust for growth and incurable fear of irrelevance. Oh, sweetie, you think a little rebrand is the end of your troubles? That’s cute. Or evil, I can’t tell which yet. Either way, it’s an obnoxious response. Apparently, Facebook wants to lean into the “metaverse,” which Zuck thinks is the future of everything. The metaverse is the entire world of virtual “places” where people can meet, work, and play. So, basically, it’s a coffee shop without any of the things that make it fun to be at a coffee shop. Plus, it largely involves those virtual reality headsets. If you’ve loved wearing a mask…
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