So Facebook has a new name? I'm pretty sure they're going to keep the same practices.

Can we just be honest about Facebook and social media in general? Things aren’t going to get better. We don’t, on a global level, really care about our privacy. Tech companies know all this. 

We’re a couple of weeks into pearl-clutching and hand-wringing about how shady Facebook has been and about just how little they plan to change that. Now you’re going to hear reaction to the announcement that Facebook isn’t Facebook anymore. We are now asked to refer to the company as “Meta” because, you know, there’s more intrusion coming. 

None of that angst and concern will translate into change, though. 

An actual whistleblower has testified, twice. A massive document dump, so revealing it’s officially the “Facebook papers,” is causing all sorts of heartburn. And calls for government regulation have resurfaced. 

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It turns out that Instagram, owned by Facebook, is bad for children. 

These are all signs of a coming reckoning for social media and Facebook, right? Something has to be done. 

We're too late to stop it

So, revolution is upon us? Nope. 

It’s too late for that. We’ve given up too much of ourselves. We’ve plugged in too much of our lives and turned a blind eye for too long. 

While we were sharing our lives online and jockeying for likes, tech companies were behind the scenes monetizing it as the foundation of an intrusive and powerful digital empire. 

They did it with our full approval and accidental help and that’s not going to stop, for three huge reasons. 

First, and honestly foremost, we don’t want it to stop. Not enough of us are going to disconnect or delete our accounts for it to matter. In fact, we’re going to do it more. We’re going to double down and actually further grow social media’s influence and footprint in our lives. 

USA TODAY Editorial:Hold Facebook accountable: Protect teens from Instagram's dark side

Did you notice that during all the recent Facebook-shaming and online protesting the company’s bottom line saw almost no impact? 

A breakdown by CNBC says the recent third-quarter earnings included a rise in Facebook stock shares and daily users hovered around 1.93 billion, which met analysts' expectations. 

That’s not a fluke. 

That same report, and many others, show the next step for Facebook. Spoiler alert, they want to be involved in much more of our lives. 

Enter "Meta." CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several other Big Tech executives have been pretty open about plans and a vision for a future that involves more of our lives being tied to their technology. The good of what can be big quality of life improvements will come with the bad that will be more of us being turned over to more of them. 

Lawmakers can't help us  

That is why my second reason for it’s too late is that Congress and lawmakers have no idea how to actually regulate it. They’re focusing on the issues of yesterday while tech companies are well into creating the problems of two years from now. 

It doesn’t help that lawmakers can’t even agree on the COVID-19 vaccine, or whether a group of angry people scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol and assaulting police officers are terrorists or just precocious tourists. 

But sure, we can trust that lot to help keep an advancing technology invasion at bay. That’s it. Reason No. 2 is short. Congress is way over its collective head on technology. Help is not coming. 

Where else are we supposed to go? 

Lastly. Third, I mean, is that there honestly isn’t a better alternative for what has become the societal norm. 

I’m old enough to remember when social media wasn’t a thing. I didn’t get my first email address until I was 22 years old. I know this because the number 22 was in my Hotmail account. I remember life before all of this. It was glorious. 

I grew up 'under a rock':My parents banned social media until I was 17. I'm glad they did.

But every generation since mine has grown up in an exponentially more digital world. That's not going away. We want to have shared experiences so much that we've collectively decided it's OK if that means giving up some of ourselves. 

It's a need that tech geniuses saw a mile away and used to create the social media landscape we see before us. All that to say social media isn't going away and our love for it will only keep growing. 

So we need an outlet and, so far, Facebook has done the best job of providing it. We're not, in any numbers that matter, going to stop using it because we love the idea behind it, myself included. 

Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe humans will rise up against Big Tech in a meaningful way and demand we get back control of our data and push for better protection, right? 

Perhaps there will be a straw that breaks the digital camel's back and we can regress a little to a time when we rebelled against increased surveillance instead of welcoming it. 

Until then, please share this column on Facebook. I could use the likes. 

Louie Villalobos is a member of the Editorial Board and an editor at USA TODAY Opinion. Follow him on Twitter: @louievillalobos