Facebook name change 'dystopian' amid whistleblower leaks, experts say

Facebook has dominated quality headlines implicit the past weeks, aft erstwhile employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked thousands of interior institution documents to a consortium of quality organizations, present referred to arsenic the "Facebook Papers," followed by an announcement connected Thursday that Facebook is changing its sanction to Meta.

The sanction change, a determination Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes volition assistance rebrand the institution and reposition it arsenic a "metaverse" player, comes aft the disclosure of the Facebook Papers to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Haugen's ineligible counsel. They resulted successful an avalanche of stories shedding airy connected the interior workings of the tech elephantine connected a scope of issues, including suppressing deceptive content, tracking harms exacerbated by its platforms, ignoring worker warnings and exposing planetary communities to unsafe content.

Kirsten Martin, the William P. and Hazel B. White Center Professor of Technology Ethics astatine the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business and manager of the University's Technology Ethics Center, says, "One idiosyncratic who benefits from the rebranding and firm sanction alteration is Zuckerberg."

"It's dystopian," she said. "If we don't spot Facebook executives successful the existent world, wherefore would we successful the virtual world? If they cannot get a grip connected the contented connected Facebook wherever the app was utilized to urge an insurrection, however volition those aforesaid executives get a grip connected contented successful the virtual abstraction they are proposing?"

Martin and her colleague, Elizabeth M. Renieris, subordinate prof of the signifier and founding manager of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab, stress that astir nary of the Facebook leaks uncover thing astonishing to academics, researchers and civilian nine organizations that person been moving connected these issues for decades, though much is expected to beryllium released successful the coming weeks.

With respect to Facebook-amplified "lawful but awful" content, Renieris says galore of the company's failures, particularly successful respect to contented moderation decisions, travel down to standard and having excessively overmuch to constabulary successful excessively galore countries.

"Insufficient cultural, linguistic, contextual oregon different expertise results successful an overreliance connected AI and different technologies," she said. "Is this a question of being excessively large to neglect oregon conscionable excessively big? Do we person to hole Facebook oregon interruption it up?

"Interestingly, the standard of the Facebook Papers is besides overwhelming and suffers from its ain problems of scale. There is overmuch much than journalists tin reasonably benignant through. This could pb to much disorder and paralysis, particularly connected the portion of lawmakers. There is nary wide way to regulation. We whitethorn really beryllium further distant from a solution."

Martin, who wrote a lawsuit connected the morals of Facebook's contented moderation algorithm, agrees what's caller present is having specified a immense measurement of earthy information disposable for scrutiny.

"People are talking astir breaking Facebook up oregon fixing what they presently do," Martin said. "What's unusual is that Facebook's reply is, 'No, we privation to turn and instrumentality connected the metaverse.'"

Martin says determination needs to beryllium much whistleblower protections oregon professionalization of Facebook's engineers truthful they person an work to study what they are finding.

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