Економіка

Facebook critics pounced Wednesday on a report that the social network plans to rename itself, arguing it may be seeking to distract from recent scandals and controversy.

The report from tech news website The Verge, which Facebook refused to confirm, said the embattled company was aiming to show its ambition to be more than a social media site.

But an activist group calling itself The Real Facebook Oversight Board warned that major industries like oil and tobacco had rebranded to “deflect attention” from their problems.

“Facebook thinks that a rebrand can help them change the subject,” said the group’s statement, adding the real issue was the need for oversight and regulation.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told AFP: “We don’t have any comment and aren’t confirming The Verge’s report.”

The Verge cited an unnamed source noting the name would reflect Facebook’s efforts to build the “metaverse,” a virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future.

Facebook on Monday announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the metaverse, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg emerging as a leading promoter of the concept.

Fallout

The announcement comes as Facebook grapples with the fallout of a damaging scandal, major outages of its services and rising calls for regulation to curb its vast influence.

The company has faced a storm of criticism over the past month after former employee Frances Haugen leaked internal studies showing Facebook knew its sites could be harmful to young people’s mental health.

The Washington Post last month suggested that Facebook’s interest in the metaverse is “part of a broader push to rehabilitate the company’s reputation with policymakers and reposition Facebook to shape the regulation of next-wave internet technologies.”

Silicon Valley analyst Benedict Evans argued a rebranding would ignore fundamental problems with the platform.

“If you give a broken product a new name, people will quite quickly work out that this new brand has the same problems,” he tweeted.

“A better ‘rebrand’ approach is generally to fix the problem first and then create a new brand reflecting the new experience,” he added.

Google rebranded itself as Alphabet in a corporate reconfiguration in 2015, but the online search and ad powerhouse remains its defining unit despite other operations such as Waymo self-driving cars and Verily life sciences.
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Facebook must pay a $4.75 million fine and up to $9.5 million in back pay to eligible victims who say the company discriminated against U.S. workers in favor of foreign ones, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. 

The discrimination took place from at least January 1, 2018, until at least September 18, 2019. 

The Justice Department said Facebook “routinely refused” to recruit or consider U.S. workers, including U.S. citizens and nationals, asylees, refugees and lawful permanent residents, in favor of temporary visa holders. Facebook also helped the visa holders get their green cards, which allowed them to work permanently 

In a separate settlement, the company also agreed to train its employees in anti-discrimination rules and conduct wider searches to fill jobs. 

The fines and back pay are the largest civil awards ever given by the DOJ’s civil rights division in its 35-year history. 

“Facebook is not above the law and must comply with our nation’s civil rights laws,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke told reporters in a telephone conference. 

“While we strongly believe we met the federal government’s standards in our permanent labor certification [PERM] practices, we’ve reached agreements to end the ongoing litigation and move forward with our PERM program, which is an important part of our overall immigration program,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “These resolutions will enable us to continue our focus on hiring the best builders from both the U.S. and around the world and supporting our internal community of highly skilled visa holders who are seeking permanent residence.” 

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press.
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Consider it a “robotaxi.” For customers who need a ride in Las Vegas, they can now use a ride-hailing startup whose cars drive themselves to customers. Tina Trinh reports.
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