In the middle of a crisis, Facebook Inc. renames itself Meta

By BARBARA ORTUTAY
AP Technology Writer

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company is rebranding itself as Meta, an effort to encompass its virtual-reality vision for the future. Experts point out that it also appears to be an attempt to change the subject from the Facebook Papers, a document trove that has revealed how Facebook ignored or downplayed internal warnings of the negative and often harmful consequences its algorithms wreaked across the world. Zuckerberg insists that the metaverse — what you might think of as the internet rendered in three dimensions — represents the next technological horizon for humanity. And he thinks a billion people could be connected to it within a decade.