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Facebook changes name to Meta, Internet jokes it is a 'meta mistake'

Facebook announced the change of the brand name — from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms, Inc. or Meta in short

Amid staunch criticism of its unethical policies globally, Facebook announced the change of the brand name — from Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms, Inc. or Meta in short. The major rebranding initiative was introduced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a virtual and augmented reality developer conference on Thursday, October 28, 2021. He revealed that the company is focused on building a 'metaverse', which would comprise an interactive simulation of people's avatars in real-time. "From now on, we’re going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first. As our new brands start showing up in our products, I hope that people come to know the Meta brand and the future that we stand for,” Zuckerberg stated. 

However, the name change did not resonate well with avid social media users as they took to the microblogging platform Twitter to share memes and rants on 'Meta'. Democrat Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez strongly questioned the move saying, "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!” In fact, as an indirect but starkly evident critique to Facebook, err, Meta, Twitter shared a post on how the Jack Dorsey-led platform hired the biggest technology critics to build ethical AI. "The only #META we acknowledge is this," read the caption. It is believed to be in criticism of Facebook's unethical usage of AI to aid their expansion, something even Elon Musk had once warned the company against. 

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Amid the criticism by global technology experts, regular users of Facebook did not quite warm up to the idea of Meta as the new name. Though the social network will continue to be identified as Facebook, users did not waste any time in sharing the most silly memes and jokes around the name change.

"New York's hottest club is: META. Sentient manilla folder Mark Zuckerberg is back with an all-new hotspot for the worst people from your high school. This place has everything," artist and activist Rob Sheridan tweeted satirically.   "Think Facebook meta mistake," one user tweeted, as another joked, "Meta is just Facebook with Cousin Oliver."

"Breaking: Facebook changed its name to "Meta" and no one cares," read another tweet. "My name is Mark Zuckerberg. I'm sure you've already noticed that the logout button on the main menus has been removed. You are all unable to log out of meta. If you die in the meta, you die in real. Life," a fourth user predicted.