# Facebook goes Meta™



## FireGS (Oct 28, 2021)

In the middle of a crisis, Facebook Inc. renames itself Meta


OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Like many companies in trouble before it, Facebook is changing its name and logo. Facebook Inc. is now called Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, to reflect what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday is its commitment to developing the new surround-yourself technology...




apnews.com


----------



## Trash Panda (Oct 28, 2021)

Sweet! Now we can get bullshit conspiracy theories rendered in 3D virtual environments instead of crazy uncle posts that can go on ignore.


----------



## nolotrippen (Oct 28, 2021)

Trash Panda said:


> Sweet! Now we can get bullshit conspiracy theories rendered in 3D virtual environments instead of crazy uncle posts that can go on ignore.


Why not both?


----------



## thebeesknees22 (Oct 28, 2021)

Trash Panda said:


> Sweet! Now we can get bullshit conspiracy theories rendered in 3D virtual environments instead of crazy uncle posts that can go on ignore.



and also get spammed with ads in 3d now lol

ads....ads....everywhere!


----------



## cuttime (Oct 28, 2021)

Is Zubin Mehta cool with this?


----------



## gsilbers (Oct 28, 2021)

its the star trek holodeck but with cartoons. 

its like they told home simpsons to build the metaverse/holodeck instead of a car lol


----------



## easyrider (Oct 28, 2021)




----------



## easyrider (Oct 28, 2021)

Off twitter

”Tired of meeting people in real life? Try our ad-supported metaverse where we connect pedophiles to children & hate-filled people to toxic streams of disinformation.“


----------



## easyrider (Oct 28, 2021)




----------



## Alchemedia (Oct 28, 2021)

*Facebook Goes Meta and Zuck Goes Mental*


----------



## ResidentSmeagol (Oct 28, 2021)

At least Zuckerberg is being honest about the two things he heavily supports -

Manipulating 
Elections
Touching
Adolescents


----------



## FireGS (Oct 28, 2021)

All I could think about watching that ridiculous keynote is...

....don't they realize that the world exists already?


----------



## cuttime (Oct 28, 2021)

Does anyone remember "Second Life"? Still seems to be a thing but nobody cares anymore.


----------



## Marsen (Oct 28, 2021)




----------



## timprebble (Oct 28, 2021)




----------



## GtrString (Oct 28, 2021)

Probably a ploy to tuck away the ceo before the world catches up with him. Facebook users are getting old, I doubt many will bother with anything like a “metaverse”. But hey, youre invited to Dystopia!


----------



## TonalDynamics (Oct 28, 2021)

This thread is gold.

This has to be some kind of stunt for Zuckerberg to escape continued prosecution/senate hearings.


----------



## Auf dem Wolf (Oct 28, 2021)




----------



## ptram (Oct 29, 2021)

A philosophical word to catch-up with kids. They will be accused of being pretentious.

Paolo


----------



## PeterN (Oct 29, 2021)

Is there any info info they will mandate this Meta app on every device.

I tried Facebook once, 2017, when I was told must use it in Taiwan to book hotels etc (general communication). Has been impossible to delete since that. Can only turn it "off", but I assume it is still collecting stuff. What a mistake to ever register.


----------



## creativeforge (Oct 29, 2021)

Metadata is the cornerstone of social media. Meta anything is like Zuckerberg in space, in your space, all the time, with all of the "big tech" woven in with politics and the military. 

Metaverse? Is that like a repository for the secret meaning of the Bible? Or a world beyond our reach, which rules our world from space stations orbiting the earth with billionaires relaying one another to play Zeus every week?

But I digress....


----------



## rroc (Oct 29, 2021)

This keynote was the biggest load of nonsense I have ever seen. Their grand vision for the metaverse is basically an online shop for buying virtual clothing for your avatar. A PlayStation Home for VR. All the social and game examples were utter nonsense. Playing poker with a robot and getting sent funny dog videos - is that Mark Zuckerberg's supposition of what it's like to have friends? They took a groundbreaking, life-altering idea and butchered it. I think it is safe to say that "Meta" is definitely not the company that will bring about the metaverse. My head hurts from having to shake it so much...


----------



## creativeforge (Oct 29, 2021)




----------



## AudioLoco (Oct 29, 2021)

Meta-bullying
Meta-fakenews
Meta-conspirancy
Meta-morehate-moremoney
Meta-privacywhat?!
Meta-advertising
Meta-Iknowhowthesecondhairinsideyourbuttlookslike
Meta-myass


----------



## darkogav (Oct 29, 2021)

Very interesting. I study media as a hobby. Interesting article on that "ad hoc" watch dog group. I wonder what their thoughts are on the COVID passport and where it fits into their big concerns about the modern age of "surveillance capitalism". You now basically can't go to a public washroom without the government knowing about it.









An Ad-Hoc Group of Activists and Academics Convene a “Real Facebook Oversight Board”


The initiative, launched by the British investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, plans to help protect the U.S. election by embracing a broad definition of oversight.




www.newyorker.com


----------



## grabauf (Oct 29, 2021)

Facebook announces name change to Skynet


Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced his company is to change its name, in order to reflect a new direction and focus for the company.




newsthump.com


----------



## creativeforge (Oct 29, 2021)




----------



## creativeforge (Oct 29, 2021)

About the author: Brian Merchant is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. He's the author of _Thhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LWRN0KI/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0 (e One Device: The Secret History) of the iPhone_, and the forthcoming _Blood in the Machine_, a book about the Luddite uprisings and the impact of automation.

► https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-mark-zuckerberg/620538/

QUOTE: "Meta—the company formerly known as Facebook—desperately wants you to believe that it is going to put the future on your face. That was the gist of Mark Zuckerberg’s hour-and-a-half announcement today that the largest social-media company in history was officially rebranding, and reorienting itself to focus on “the metaverse.”

The news was jarring, but hardly surprising. For Facebook, 2021 has been the Year of Trying to Make the Metaverse Happen. First, there was the splashy announcement in _The Verge_, courtesy of Zuckerberg himself, that Facebook would no longer be a social-media company. Instead, it would transition into “a metaverse company.” In Zuckerberg’s words, this means building out “an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content—you are in it.”"

It feels like the party is over, the sheen is gone, and all at once a load of people stopped drinking tap water. Is Zuckerberg's avatar running the show now? Facebook is to most people a whole different animal than it is for Zuck. That he is not aware of that is a strange thing.

A revolutionary thing Zuck could do is PAY people who post a lot of solid content (no memes, no companies, just individuals).


----------



## cuttime (Oct 29, 2021)




----------



## LatinXCombo (Oct 29, 2021)

Excellent. Here's hoping the name will a breath new life into the social networking service created because a bunch of timid college boys were too afraid to speak directly to girls, ensuring that its positive and totally non-dysfunctional societal benefits will continue to accrue well into the 2020s!


----------



## Fidelity (Oct 29, 2021)

Facebook pulling a Ron Artest


----------



## easyrider (Oct 29, 2021)




----------



## Kevin Fortin (Oct 29, 2021)

I am completely in favor of sticking my head into some techcorps' algorithmically playful dreamworld that will make me even more psychotic to their benefit more than mine.


----------



## NekujaK (Oct 29, 2021)

​


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Oct 29, 2021)

If VI-C ever went meta, maybe we would just take turns posting "Nada Brahma" whenever the Spirit or quantum fluctuations moved us.


----------



## musicalweather (Oct 29, 2021)

easyrider said:


>


It's scary how much the real-life Zuck looks like a 'borg.


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Oct 29, 2021)

thebeesknees22 said:


> and also get spammed with ads in 3d now lol
> 
> ads....ads....everywhere!


In the Metaverse, ads will be a form of humor. Who needs ads when everyone has lost their agency?


----------



## thereus (Oct 29, 2021)

There's something wrong with that guy.


----------



## thereus (Oct 29, 2021)

Incidentally, can you get Soundpaint on that?


----------



## creativeforge (Oct 29, 2021)

QUOTE: “It’s tempting to view Facebook’s rebranding as nothing more than a cynical attempt by the company to distance itself from endless scandals and the real-world harm caused by its surveillance capitalist business model. 

But it’s actually much more sinister than that,” said Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, in a statement Friday."









Varoufakis Says Zuckerberg Is Stealing 'Meta' Name


In a tweet Friday, the Greek economist and Progressive International co-founder called out the tech giant for taking the moniker of a global anti-capitalist think tank. By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams As Facebook faces a firestorm for changing its corporate name to Meta amid heighten




consortiumnews.com





QUOTE: “With this announcement Mark Zuckerberg revealed his end game: He’s making a play to control the future of the Internet,” she asserted, accusing the CEO of “co-opting the terminology of decentralization and attempting to solidify his stranglehold on the future of human attention and interaction.”

Emphasizing the importance of recognizing that “the Internet is changing,” Greer argued that “we need to fight tooth and nail to ensure that the policies governing this next generation of the Internet are carefully crafted to protect vulnerable communities, free expression, and human rights –– and that they don’t undermine the potential of truly decentralized technologies, which could help finally end the era of Big Tech surveillance capitalism.”


----------



## rroc (Oct 29, 2021)

Wrote this piece about *The dark sides of XR* a while ago. 




Have a look if you want to hear about *a lot* of reasons why no one should want a metaverse built by Facebook in the first place...


----------



## creativeforge (Oct 29, 2021)

rroc said:


> Wrote this piece about *The dark sides of XR* a while ago.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That's your writing, Markus? Interesting ideas, lots to think about, especially to innovate cooperative work projects. 

I'm more worried about the whole swathe of the world left out of this virtual fantasy world. Especially the poorest of the poor, those stuck in theaters of war, all due to human cruelty, not because we need new methods of working, but because we never really solved basic human problems like clean water, food distribution, healthcare, freedom from colonialism, monitoring of rogue nations with the deterring possibility to discipline them incrementally. 

Just thinking out loud. And I don't ever play video games, VR or otherwise.


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Oct 29, 2021)

Thank goodness for Ray Bradbury and Ira Levin and whoever else saw this kind of thing coming and wrote about it.

Thank you for prepping us in advance.


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Oct 29, 2021)

Or maybe Zuckerberg is trolling/helping the people of Earth, showing them that this could really happen, and hoping to provoke resistance against such a thing really happening?


----------



## rroc (Oct 31, 2021)

creativeforge said:


> I'm more worried about the whole swathe of the world left out of this virtual fantasy world. Especially the poorest of the poor, those stuck in theaters of war, all due to human cruelty, not because we need new methods of working, but because we never really solved basic human problems like clean water, food distribution, healthcare, freedom from colonialism, monitoring of rogue nations with the deterring possibility to discipline them incrementally.


Right? It's not like we've got everything else figured out...


----------



## bill5 (Oct 31, 2021)

I assumed this was a weird joke but given how much rambling was going on in this thread I looked it up...and now that I see it's real, it's actually funny lol. What's even funnier is him using a word like "metaverse." That's like screaming "I'm about to throw a load of nonsensical BS at you." People actually listened to his entire jabbering speech? Really? That's funny too!

I'm on FB casually to keep connected to a few people and occasionally share photos. But if it went away tomorrow it'd get little more than a yawn from me.


----------



## Auf dem Wolf (Oct 31, 2021)

Solid article @rroc.


creativeforge said:


> I'm more worried about the whole swathe of the world left out of this virtual fantasy world. Especially the poorest of the poor, those stuck in theaters of war, all due to human cruelty, not because we need new methods of working, but because we never really solved basic human problems like clean water, food distribution, healthcare, freedom from colonialism, monitoring of rogue nations with the deterring possibility to discipline them incrementally.


Solid article @rroc. @creativeforge, agreed. Bad actors like Bannon are busy weaponizing this vision of the future and whipping up fear of it's "transhuman" overlords. 

I like Jaron's concept of Data Dignity.


----------



## rroc (Oct 31, 2021)

bill5 said:


> I assumed this was a weird joke but given how much rambling was going on in this thread I looked it up...and now that I see it's real, it's actually funny lol. What's even funnier is him using a word like "metaverse." That's like screaming "I'm about to throw a load of nonsensical BS at you." People actually listened to his entire jabbering speech? Really? That's funny too!
> 
> I'm on FB casually to keep connected to a few people and occasionally share photos. But if it went away tomorrow it'd get little more than a yawn from me.


As someone who's worked with VR/AR/XR full-time for 7+ years I'm quite invested in the idea of the metaverse. And facebook/meta trying to take possession of the name and butchering what should be the next life-changing technological advancement makes me sad and angry. This keynote was hard to watch. I would be laughing if Mark Zuckerberg wasn't throwing billions of dollars into the ring to make his version of a VR gift-shop a reality while (presumably) trying to prevent everyone else from making something that's truly life-altering.


----------



## cedricm (Nov 1, 2021)

FireGS said:


> In the middle of a crisis, Facebook Inc. renames itself Meta
> 
> 
> OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Like many companies in trouble before it, Facebook is changing its name and logo. Facebook Inc. is now called Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, to reflect what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday is its commitment to developing the new surround-yourself technology...
> ...


Delete Meta.


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Nov 2, 2021)

The important thing is to further monetize human attention and passive processing power.

As for me, it's clear that getting borged and gene-modded would be insufficient to oppose this monstrous power-grab.

Which is why I intend to go full quantum as soon as the right opportunity presents itself.


----------



## bill5 (Nov 2, 2021)

uh............yeah.


----------



## rroc (Nov 4, 2021)

I too am looking to get quantum-entangled. Just waiting to get my DNA encryption upgraded to a quantum-proof algorithm. I know a guy...


----------



## MarcusD (Nov 4, 2021)

Anyone remember this scene from Wall-E? Literally the way we're heading if Metaverse becomes a 'thing'.


----------



## Trash Panda (Nov 4, 2021)

MarcusD said:


> Anyone remember this scene from Wall-E? Literally the way we're heading if Metaverse becomes a 'thing'.


Probably more Ready Player One than Wall-E. Not enough memes and pop culture references in the latter.


----------



## rroc (Nov 4, 2021)

Ready Player One = constant motion sickness. Those kinds of VR experiences don't work *at all* in reality. But maybe we'll get a good mix of both. We'll be soft blobs spending all our money on virtual clothing for our virtual pets. Or have you seen the "fifteen million merits" episode of Black Mirror? Maybe we'll get a touch of that too...


----------



## Robert_G (Nov 4, 2021)

*'Meta' means 'Death' in Hebrew.*

Now that may seem insignificant, but is it?
Something well known in the business world is that any multibillion dollar company looking for a new 'name', will always hire someone to research what the potential 'candidate' for a company name means in hundreds of different languages. Hebrew is NOT a fringe or uncommon language like say.....some never heard of language from a tribe deep in some jungle. Hebrew is quite common.

So in this case, there are two options:

1. It was either overlooked or missed.
2. It was deliberate.

No question it was number 2....and that is not a conspiracy theory.

You can do with that whatever you want.


----------



## bill5 (Nov 4, 2021)

MarcusD said:


> Anyone remember this scene from Wall-E? Literally the way we're heading if Metaverse becomes a 'thing'.


? Most of that movie (the real-life intro especially by far) is where we ARE heading full speed and have been for decades. Older generations used to condemn TV for being a big factor and the beginning of the end, at which younger generations scoffed and laughed off as an "old person thing." Too bad that they were by and large correct. Then the internet and cell phones came and hit the turbo button. Be afraid. FB is a drop in the bucket in the big picture (yet determined to do his part oh joy!).


----------



## Daren Audio (Nov 5, 2021)

It looks like Zuckerberg may be shelling out $20M in order to get the full rights to that name.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/395376


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Nov 5, 2021)

Robert_G said:


> *'Meta' means 'Death' in Hebrew.*
> 
> Now that may seem insignificant, but is it?
> Something well known in the business world is that any multibillion dollar company looking for a new 'name', will always hire someone to research what the potential 'candidate' for a company name means in hundreds of different languages. Hebrew is NOT a fringe or uncommon language like say.....some never heard of language from a tribe deep in some jungle. Hebrew is quite common.
> ...


Has anyone done the gematria on "metaverse" -- or would that even work, since it's a combo of Greek and Latin roots?


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Nov 5, 2021)

MarcusD said:


> Anyone remember this scene from Wall-E? Literally the way we're heading if Metaverse becomes a 'thing'.


Hmm. Haven't seen Wall-E but I seem to remember a live-action movie that had a lot of atrophied people who wasted away in VR land (not the Matrix movies, but I think it had Bruce Willis in it as the protagonist).

Recently I gave the online game "Blade & Soul" a try. After an hour the system says: "You have been playing for an hour. Please take a break." Ideally the metaverse would kick us out once in a while and remind us to drink our Vivishakes and go for a walk once in a while (j/k, we would have IVs for nutrition and stimsuits to keep our blood from pooling and our muscles from completely wasting away).


----------



## Kevin Fortin (Nov 5, 2021)

Daren Audio said:


> It looks like Zuckerberg may be shelling out $20M in order to get the full rights to that name.
> 
> https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/395376


They should ask for One Million Ethers.


----------

