The 37-year-old has renamed his company “Meta”.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
Vaccinated and tested Europeans have finally been able to travel to the USA again since Monday. This will tighten the somewhat loosened transatlantic ties on a private level. Politically and economically, the USA and the EU remain a community of fate anyway. The two economic areas are far too closely interlinked for that.
The hearing of Frances Haugen before the European Parliament (EP) once again demonstrated that this also applies to the digital economy: “The Digital Services Act (of the EU) has the potential to become a global gold standard,” said the Facebook Whistleblower who, with her revelations, plunged the global social media platform into the greatest crisis since the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Europe could inspire other countries, including the USA, to introduce new rules that would better protect Western democracies .
It took a little longer than in Europe, but political resistance to the overwhelming power of Big Tech is now growing in the USA too. Facebook is in the crossfire on both sides of the Atlantic. An entire legislative package is up for vote in the US Congress that could force the company to split up its social media empire, which also includes WhatsApp and Instagram.
And how is Facebook founder and sole ruler Mark Zuckerberg reacting to the latest crisis of confidence? “In my opinion, this is a coordinated action to paint the wrong picture of our company,” said Zuckerberg with a view to Haugens revelations. As a reminder: The whistleblower accuses her former employer of repeatedly giving priority to the pursuit of profit over the safety of users, despite internal and external warnings.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The 37-year-old tech titan is apparently not challenged. While supervisors in the US and Europe are storming his old empire, he is already working on a new, even bigger vision: the metaverse, which Zuckerberg describes as: “You can think of the metaverse as an embodied Internet in which you don’t have content just look at it, but find yourself in it. ”So that he is not associated with negative headlines on Facebook every day, Zuckerberg has simply renamed his company to“ Meta ”- according to the motto“ out of sight, out of mind ”.
Now, Zuckerberg isn’t the first tech titan to try to escape his critics by escaping into a new universe. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos travels into space and Tesla head Elon Musk even dreams of a life on Mars.
Bezos took off in July and handed over the day-to-day business of Amazon to his long-time companion Andy Jassy. This step is still ahead of the Facebook superfather. “Zuckerberg will have power on Facebook for as long as he wants. But the time when he was the revered leader and cultural touchstone of the company is practically over, ”states Kara Swisher, tech critic for the New York Times.
Who could follow Zuckerberg on Facebook? For a long time, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg was considered his natural successor. But the former Google manager is badly hit by the numerous scandals in the Facebook empire. A name that is associated with Zuckerberg and Facebook again and again is Brad Smith.
The President of Microsoft is a trained lawyer and is regarded in the tech industry as a thoughtful thought leader in a restrained tech world. His book “Tools and Weapons”, published two years ago, reads like a manual for better regulation of Big Tech. In addition, Microsoft also wants to create its own metaverse next year: for business people with Powerpoint and Excel.
More: The US and the EU are preparing for the digital future – at least on paper.