Facebook: AOC blasts ‘cancer’ site as it changes name to Meta

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Twitter users were quick to ridicule Facebook for changing its corporate name to Meta following a tidal wave of criticism and scandalous revelations, with progressive lawmaker Alexandria -Ocasio Cortez leading the charge.

The New York Democratic representative tweeted: “Meta as in ‘we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society… for profit!’”

“Facebook just changed their name to META. Honestly this is insane news,” one Twitter user wrote.

Another added that Mark Zuckerbeg had “a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s on the bookshelf as he announces Facebook’s rebrand to Meta. If this isn’t proof we are in a simulation [I don’t know] what is”.

“Rebranding a company mired in controversy is never a surefire cure for the maladies unspooling its operations or ravaging its reputation,” Tim O’Brien wrote for Bloomberg Opinion.

He added that he thinks that Mr Zuckerberg chose to change the name “because it’s a distraction for himself and for those watching his company. He’s doing it so he can continue avoiding the hard decisions that a mature and responsible executive must make when confronted with a corporation that has grown into an incredibly lucrative, unwieldy and sometimes dangerous Kraken”.

Follow The Independent’s live coverage of Facebook’s name change

CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan struck a similar tone to Mr O’Brien, noting: “Facebook’s new company name is Meta. It still has all the same problems it had this morning.”

Journalist and author Kurt Eichenwald tweeted: “Let me be the first to say that Meta, the new name for Facebook, is an evil company.”

Even the UK social media team for the German supermarket company Aldi mocked the name change.

Author John Scalzi tweeted: “Oh, for f***’s sake. One, everyone who uses the term ‘meta’ for anything can expect this a**hole’s lawyers to get all up in their business, which will be JUST GREAT, THANKS. Two, a racist authoritarian-leaning tech company by any other name still sucks.”

Former Biden White House Senior Adviser for Covid-19 Response, Andy Slavitt, tweeted: “Meta accomplishes only one thing. It allows Mark Zuckerberg to say he’s not the CEO of Facebook. He will now do less controversial things like build a new virtual universe where he can be king. While running Facebook.”

The Daily Show tweeted that it was going to “take a while to get used to saying ‘He was radicalized in a META group’”.

“So Facebook changed its name to Meta. Mark Zuckerberg could call that s**t Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and it wouldn’t change the fact that he’s a billionaire a**hole selling personal data, spreading misinformation and pushing propaganda,” one Twitter user wrote.