AOC POSTED A BRUTAL TAKEDOWN OF FACEBOOK AFTER IT CHANGED ITS NAME TO META


She did not hold back at all.

BY ELISA GARCIA
OCT. 30, 2021
WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is no stranger to standing up for what she believes in and calling out misinformation. So, of course, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday, Oct. 28 that the Facebook Company would be changing its name to Meta, in true AOC fashion, she took to Twitter to share a pretty brutal analysis of the company’s name change. Of course, AOC’s tweet about Facebook’s “Meta” name change gets straight to the point, and it’s a scalding response to the social media rebrand.

Shortly after Zuckerberg’s announcement on Oct. 28, Ocasio-Cortez reshared a video of the Facebook CEO unveiling his company’s new name and called out the tech giant’s increasingly questionable decisions regarding misinformation, particularly in relation to surveillance, political propaganda, and healthcare. “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!,’” AOC said in the tweet.

This is not AOC’s first time calling out the social media giant. Let’s not forget AOC’s March 11, 2019 tweet in which she said that the U.S. “has a Facebook problem.” The critique was aimed at Facebook’s actions when they took down several Elizabeth Warren ads and called for tech giants, including Facebook, to be broken up.

AOC got the chance to take the conversation off Twitter on Oct. 23, 2019 during a hearing in which AOC and other lawmakers questioned Zuckerberg on the launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Libra, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the company’s procedure —or lack thereof— to oversee proper political advertisements. And all in all, Zuckerberg stumbled on some questions.

The announcement of Facebook’s name change comes a few weeks after the company and its associated companies shut down for several hours on Oct. 4. According to Facebook, the outage was caused by “a network issue” that rippled onto other platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp. And yes, AOC had something to say about that too. Still, people couldn’t help but notice the blackout occurred just one day after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen exposed the tech company for putting profit before safety. All factors that help us dissect AOC’s knock-out tweet.

While it remains unclear how Meta will change its internal processes from that of Facebook’s, one thing is certain, AOC will continue to deliver brutal tweets in the case the tech company doesn’t contribute to a “free society and democracy.”