Facebook Renames to Meta • Hacker News Board

This looks like an attempt to obfuscate the negative sentiments that we’ve come to associate with the conglomerate Facebook. I think there will be some short term success, but Meta and Facebook will become synonymous as Alphabet and Google are.

I’m also reminded that our mass media will play a major role in how public sentiment plays out. Like him or not, you have to admit the great lengths our media has covered Dave Chappelle over the past few weeks. You’d think things like this Facebook rebrand or the stalled infrastructure bill would have more meaningful coverage. Outrage, like sex, sells. I wonder if this rebrand will breach the outrage threshold?

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#194

Post by glogla » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

jfmc wrote: post #122

daviding wrote: post #36

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story. Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow? Federate it a bit more than they are comfortable with, to at least give it a chance. I could see this flubbing out hard otherwise. I'm personally…

A Facebook-controlled metaverse, rising gas prices... it is only a matter of time that humans ends up being used as batteries.

Fun fact, in Matrix (if that's what you're referring to) people were originally enslaved by the machines to provide compute capacity of their brains. The battery part came later, when someone (studio executives?) jumped in, and said that's too smart and people wouldn't get it so it was changed to batteries.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#195

Post by bmhin » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #105

daviding wrote: post #36

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story. Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow? Federate it a bit more than they are comfortable with, to at least give it a chance. I could see this flubbing out hard otherwise. I'm personally…

I thought the market has repeatedly shown there isn't much demand for persistent virtual worlds?

> the market has repeatedly shown there isn't much demand for persistent virtual worlds

I don't know if you have a more narrow view of this idea or specifically mean VR/AR, but that just sounds like what massively multiplayer online (MMO) games such as Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft are. I think Roblox is even a broader use case, though I am fairly unfamiliar with that.

MMOs have been very viable from both a business and user stand point and have been a fairly big thing for going on a quarter century or so at this point. Whether these branch into more of the Second Life non-game social space or into being largely AR/VR driven is pretty up in the air, but it's not some sci-fi concept really.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#196

Post by racl101 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

Drop the 'ta'.

It's cleaner.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#197

Post by IceWreck » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #35

I suspect we will be awash in critical comments shortly, so let me just say I'm kind of excited about this. Don't forget that the internet was originally a military project. I'm excited to see a huge corporation going all in on VR and AR. It has the potential to be really interesting technology, and the research in displays, sensors, and other hardware and software won't go to waste. If "Meta" is the new ARPANET, I w…

> If "Meta" is the new ARPANET, I wonder what the new CERN and web will be.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves. This so called "Metaverse" will be another proprietary project that may or may not gain traction unless they open it up for federation. And facebook is all about walled gardens so they won't.

And if they do, how do we know that 10 years later they wont shutter up their instance, cut off the federated parts to monopolize their own (presumably biggest) instance.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#198

Post by gitfan86 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

Ansil849 wrote: post #20

In London, in the area around the London Eye, there is a tourist trap that offers a very poor 'haunted house' type of attraction, usually something having to do with zombies. As each iteration of this tourist trap gains a reputation for being total rubbish and gains one star reviews online, every few months the attraction rebrands to another name.

At least at that place everyone is in on the scam. Facebook execs have to smile and say good idea to Mark, when all they want to do is tell him that is stupid

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#199

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

Wait what. They bought Meta VR like a couple of years ago. Some of my friends were there.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#200

Post by jareklupinski » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #57

nerbert wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colombo invented the "one more thing". Give credit where credit is due ;)

"Good artists copy, great artists steal" -Steve Jobs (who stole this from Pablo Picasso, and there is a debate about whether or not Picaso even came up with the quote originally)

- Colombo