Whistleblower blasts Facebook's Meta rebrand

Whistleblower Frances Haugen issued a stinging rebuke of Facebook's "Meta" rebrand connected Monday, accusing the institution of yet again prioritising enlargement implicit people's safety.

The erstwhile Facebook engineer, who leaked a trove of interior documents that person sparked weeks of disapproval of the societal media giant, besides called connected its president and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to measurement down.

Speaking astatine the Web Summit tech league successful Lisbon, Haugen said it was "unconscionable" that Facebook was trumpeting its ambitions to make the "metaverse"—a virtual world mentation of the internet—rather than focusing connected fixing existing problems.

"Over and implicit again Facebook chooses enlargement successful caller areas implicit sticking the landing connected what they've already done," she told an assemblage of tens of thousands successful the Portuguese capital.

"Instead of investing successful making definite their platforms are a minimum level of safe, they're astir to put 10,000 engineers successful video games."

Facebook past period announced that it volition prosecute 10,000 caller unit successful Europe implicit the adjacent 5 years successful its bid to physique the metaverse, which would usage virtual world to marque online experiences—like chatting to a friend, oregon attending a concert—feel face-to-face.

The institution past week announced it was changing the sanction of Facebook's genitor institution to "Meta" to awesome the alteration successful focus.

Critics person derided the rebrand arsenic an attempted distraction from the avalanche of damaging revelations from Haugen's leaked documents.

The "Facebook Papers" amusement that institution executives knew of their sites' imaginable for harm connected galore fronts, including the uncontrolled dispersed of hatred code successful processing countries arsenic good arsenic Instagram's interaction connected teens' mental health.

Haugen has accused Facebook of ignoring concerns raised by its ain employees successful the pursuit of profit.

'Overwhelming'

Asked if Zuckerberg should measurement down, she said: "I deliberation Facebook would beryllium stronger with idiosyncratic who's consenting to absorption connected safety, truthful yes."

She went on: "It doesn't marque him a atrocious idiosyncratic to person made mistakes, but it is unacceptable to proceed to marque the aforesaid atrocious mistakes aft you cognize that those are mistakes."

Haugen has testified earlier US and UK lawmakers successful caller weeks, but the Web Summit—which she officially opened, with an detonation of confetti raining down from the ceiling—marked her archetypal quality earlier a wider public.

She said it was "overwhelming" to talk successful beforehand of truthful galore people, telling the crowd: "Right present my bosom is beating astir arsenic accelerated arsenic I tin imagine."

Facebook vice president Nick Clegg, who is owed to code the Web Summit connected Tuesday, volition apt cull Haugen's proposition that the metaverse task equates to a wide concern successful "video games".

Zuckerberg past week showcased a much-mocked promo of what the metaverse could yet look and consciousness like—which was so playful, involving flying koi carp and a paper crippled with a robot.

But Silicon Valley enthusiasts judge the metaverse could correspond the adjacent large leap successful the improvement of the internet, yet blurring the digital world seamlessly with the carnal one, creating a wealthiness of caller economical opportunities.

The metaverse is the taxable of galore events astatine this year's Web Summit, which runs done Thursday.

"I deliberation immoderate of the treatment volition be, 'how overmuch of it is hype and however overmuch of it is real?'" Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave told AFP.

Some 40,000 attendees are flying into Portugal for the tech conference—all of them requiring impervious of vaccination oregon a antagonistic PCR—in a trial of the instrumentality to wide events.

Organisers person hailed the information that big state Portugal enjoys 1 of the world's highest vaccination rates.

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© 2021 AFP