Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of new 'corporate values' for Facebook parent company Meta, and told staff they are now &#...
Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of new 'corporate values' for Facebook parent company Meta, and told staff they are now 'Metamates'.
The announcement was made during a meeting for all staff on Tuesday, according to a report in the Verge, that saw Zuckerberg outline what it means to work for Meta.
He included the introduction of new values, such as 'build awesome things', 'move fast together' and a new call to 'focus on long term impact.' These build on existing Facebook values, such as be bold and move fast.
This is an evolution of slogans, which was once 'Move fast and break things', evolved into simply 'move fast' and is now 'move fast together'.
Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to Meta last year, creating a parent company for some of the largest social media apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram.
To create a new unified identify, for all employees of the firm, he said staff should consider themselves, Metamates, and that the priority order when considering self, versus colleagues and the firm should be 'Meta, Metamates, me.'
Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of new 'corporate values' for Facebook parent company Meta, and told staff they are now 'Metamates'
Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to Meta last year, creating a parent company for some of the largest social media apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram
On Facebook, Zuckerberg explained that the current values were wrote in 2007, but a lot had changed within the firm since then.
'We are now a distributed company. We have a global community and wide reaching impact. And we're now a metaverse company, building the future of social connection,' he explained, adding that 'now is the right time to update our values and our cultural operating system.
'I've always believed that in order for values to be useful, they need to be ideas that good companies can reasonably disagree with or emphasize differently. By working at Meta, we commit to applying these values to our work every day. I think these values capture how we must act as a company to bring our vision to life.'
Chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, said on Twitter that the Meta, Metamates, me slogan was in reference to a 'naval phrase which Instagram has used for a while' - 'Ship, Shipmates, self'.
The word Metamates was an original idea suggested by Douglas Hofstadter, scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature, after an employee of MEta asked him for ideas, according to Bosworth.
These changes, which also include a call from Zuckerberg for staff not to 'nice ourselves to death,' are part of a bid to build a new corporate identity.
The announcement was made during a meeting for all staff on Tuesday, according to a report in the Verge , that saw Zuckerberg outline what it means to work for Meta
Zuckerberg explained that the 'naval-inspired' new slogan, that has spread from Instagram to the whole firm, was about being good stewards of the company.
'It's about the sense of responsibility we have for our collective success and to each other as teammates. It's about taking care of our company and each other,' he said.
'At the end of the day, values aren't what you write on a website but what we hold each other accountable for every day. I encourage you to reflect on these values and what they mean to you as we start working on this next chapter for our company.'
The announcement was made at a town hall meeting, but also streamed through the virtual reality-based Horizon Venues.
As well as new slogans, and a new name for employees, this is a shift away from a particularly open culture for the social media firm.
Insiders predict this is a move to avoid leaks and repetitional damage, asking everyone employed by Meta to consider the welfare of the firm as a whole.
Meta employs more than 71,000 people, all connected to an internal 'Facebook-like' chat system called Workplace that hosts deep debates on everything from Black Lives Matter to elections, as well as internal research on the company's impact.
This is part of the open culture, once prized by the firm. But in recent years this information has made it out beyond the corporate firewall.
In 20221 Frances Haugen, a whisleblower, released thousands of documents that had been posted to Workplace that revealed research into social harms caused by the likes of Instagram and Facebook.
This prompted the firm to shut down groups within Workplace that were open to a lot of people, and having communications teams tell staff posting critical comments about Facebook and its business, that they were being disrespectful.
Facebook has been faced with years of controversy, mainly linked to the sharing of data and impact on the mental health of its users, and politics of countries.
Part of the name change to Meta was to shift away from being a social media brand, into a new 'metaverse' company, that also sold hardware such as the Oculus Rift.
The rebranding came soon after a series of whistleblower reports that revealed how much damage to society Facebook, and its subsidiaries, was doing to society.
This came in the form of affecting the body image of young women, through to allowing the spread of disinformation - on everything from vaccines to politics.
The firm is still facing legal battles, including a law suit from the state of Texas over the use of facial recognition by Facebook.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed the lawsuit in state District Court in Marshall, said the company's capture of facial geometry in photographs that users uploaded between 2010 and 2021 resulted in 'tens of millions of violations' of Texas law, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Early in February Facebook was ordered to remove content defaming a politician and post a banner on its Austrian homepage announcing the ruling after losing a legal battle, which also saw the internet giant pay €4,000 in damages.
Yesterday it was announced that Meta had settled a decade-old class action lawsuit over the use of cookies in 2010 and 2011 that tracked people even when logged out.
As part of the proposed settlement, which must still be approved by a judge, Meta has agreed to delete all the data it 'wrongfully collected' during that period. The company, which posted profits of $39.37 billion in 2021, will also pay $90 million to users who filed a claim, after lawyer fees are deducted.
'Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders and we're glad to move past this issue,' said Meta spokesperson Drew Pusateri in a statement on Tuesday.
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