Switch back end forth between Meta and Facebook to enforce the connection

Meta is like Alphabet. Facebook, Insta, WhatsApp are products under Meta. Facebook the product will stay the same. Where it gets a bit hazy is what the new "Metaverse" product will be exactly, something something VR something AR.

I think it's the same as with Google.

Of course there's some "hull" called "Alphabet" who legally owns Google, but what more than a hull is it? Don't know whether it's for tax reasons, spreading the risk, trying to decouple the image in case of failed products, everybody knows that Alphabet == Google. Same goes for Facebook and Meta: There might be a Meta hull but that hull is quite packed with Facebook, so it does not really matter what the hull is called (or does).

Meta is a holding company, much like Alphabet for Google, and is intended to limit cross-concern damage. By keeping services as separate entities under the holding company they are shielded from each other to an extent with regard to tax, other financial, regulatory, criminal, and other responsibilities, so a massive problem/scandal in one service can have its blast radius more easily managed.

These arrangements also make it easier to close things down if needed: it simplifies redundancy (“why can't you offer me a replacement role over there?”, “that is a separate company”) and so forth, though this is more a concern of smaller organisations than Meta & Alphabet. A company I've worked for once had a significant rearrangement with people signing contracts for specific parts where they had previously been employed by the larger group entity, shortly before “divesting” some of those parts. Shady, but legal.