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Comment by NinjaTrance | Hacker News Reader

They changed their name to "Meta" after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Was the name change related to publicity from that? My memory is that it was part of an attempt to be the new Second Life. But on the other hand I tend to be naive.

Yes, they did it to break the association with their brand (“reputation laundering”) and then they got into 3D to throw some chaff. Seems to have worked for them.

If they changed their name to “Flobular” it wouldn’t change a thing.

They’re Facebook in many people’s minds.

“Meta” doesn’t convey the same meaning that “Facebook” does. And it’s also squatting on an important term in English. Mets is used all over the language, like metaphysical.

No thanks, I’ll use Facebook

> They’re Facebook in many people’s minds.

And Meta loves it. People can ‘not use Facebook’ while living on WhatsApp and Instagram.

How committed are you? A one letter change gets you to Faceboot, as in "a boot stamping on a human face - forever". Just sayin'.

It just comes naturally to me, I know them as Facebook.

There’s some effect of corporate name changing in order to have a reputational reset. I’m opposed to that.

Real people OTOH I’m happy to call them whatever they wish

Right on, I agree with you on all points. I just found it easy enough to change that last letter to a 't'.

Because in addition to simply opposing corpos' name resets, I'll go even further by modifying their names to better label their behavior. Corpos spend gobs of cash on naming and branding - it must mean something. So why not embrace that dynamic from an individualist perspective?

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