Facebook can't hide its problems behind a new name | Hacker News Reader

Facebook can't hide its problems behind a new name

wired.com

17 pointsvalprop19 comments

I don't think they are changing their name like Comcast did to Xfinity in hopes of people not associating with their poor brand reputation.

Rather it's like Google becoming Alphabet, where it's just more of a legal process having a top level different name brand that Facebook and everything else falls under.

I think it makes sense. Facebook develops a bunch products, the "facebook" social network is just one of them which also happens to be the most problematic. I don't think there's anything fundamentally evil with FB or Zuckerberg. It's just that social networks pose a lot of challenges.

> I don't think there's anything fundamentally evil with FB or Zuckerberg. It's just that social networks pose a lot of challenges.

Not necessarily evil but very, very morally objectionable. Inaction is also a decision, inaction on the face of mounting facts that your platform is damaging people is definitely borderline evil.

Not sure how you judge that, yeah, social networks pose a lot of challenges, a safe food supply is also a huge challenge (keeping quality from planting all the way to processing, storage and so on) and we don't accept food poisoning as "it's just a side-effect of posing a lot of challenges".

I think that if people truly consider that social media in and of itself is 'damaging' people, then maybe we should all vote on that fact via democratic process and change the rules universally.

As it is now, it's a free market. Sure, there are issues---but the people who use Facebook regularly think they are manageable or nonexistant. Facebook themselves though think they're doing no wrong (kind of like a casino who bankrupts people but justifies it as proving 'entertainment').

> Inaction is also a decision

To be fair, FB spends huge amount of money and resource to deal with the various problems that are well identified. I don't see inaction there.

> we don't accept food poisoning as "it's just a side-effect of posing a lot of challenges".

This is your interpretation that FB is akin to food poisoning, but this is not mine. Besides, a lot of business have potentially undesirable consequences (e.g. junk food leads to obesity and health problem) that we tolerate because we assume people are free to make their own choices.

But what's your solution exactly?

This article is a strawman. Facebook is not creating a new name for the purpose of "hiding its problems". It is to have a different corporate name for all of its different businesses.

Yeah are they not just creating an umbrella company like Alphabet? I don't think Google created Alphabet in order to "hide its problems behind a new name". It's just so they had a more sensible company structure.

It won’t be about the name, it’ll be about the corporate restructuring and it’s attempt at grift and legal shielding.

Welcome to the boomerverse

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