Facebook is changing the name of its holding company to Meta. The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, revealed the name change at its annual AR/VR conference on October 28th, 2021. He also gave an outline of the company’s virtual reality project for the future. 

He described his plans to create the “metaverse,” a digital world created with our own, compromising virtual reality and augmented reality.

“We believe the metaverse will be the successor of the mobile internet. We will be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are.”  said Zuckerberg.

This name change comes right after the company faced a barrage of negative PR issues with a lawsuit, a fine of 5 billion dollars for “deceiving users,” and a series of leaked documents revealing toxic business practices and knowledge of the negative public health impact the website has on people.

“The fact that Zuckerberg has set his sights firmly on the so-called ‘metaverse’ while societies around the world are scrambling to alleviate the myriad harms caused by his platforms just goes to show how out of touch Facebook is with real people.” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Zuckerberg tried to move on from these privacy and security concerns. Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of global affairs, admitted that the company has faced criticism for not seeing the long term impacts of its problems.

“We have years until the metaverse as we envision it is fully realized. This is the beginning of the journey,” Clegg said. 

Only time will tell if the metaverse will become as famous and useful as Mark Zuckerberg said it would.