Technologies

Facebook to Meta: A new name but the same old problems

Plagued by scandals, Facebook rebrands itself as Meta. The tech giant still must earn back our trust.

Facebook’s iconic thumbs-up sign at its Menlo Park, California, headquarters now bears a blue infinity-shaped symbol along with a new name: Meta.

The corporate rebranding, unveiled Thursday at Facebook’s Connect conference, is part of Facebook’s headlong sprint into the metaverse, a virtual environment where people could work, play, learn and socialize with one another. CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the metaverse, which at this point is largely hypothetical, «the successor to the mobile internet.»

In barreling headlong into the metaverse, however, Facebook may be repeating the practices that got it into trouble in the first place. The company’s former mantra — «Move fast and break things» — encouraged a culture that rewarded new ideas without careful consideration of the risks. The metaverse will create an entirely new environment for Facebook’s legacy problems to take root.

Facebook’s hard-charging attitude has contributed to it racking up a seemingly endless list of scandals around data privacy, hate speech and misinformation. It’s been blamed for destroying democracy and for body shaming. The company’s latest controversy, which involves leaked documents gathered by former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, has proved especially damaging. Haugen alleges the company has misled the public and investors about its role in perpetuating hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content.

Facebook denies the accusations, noting that it has more than 40,000 people working on safety and security. About 3.58 billion people use Facebook and its services every month.

Analysts say a clever rebranding won’t help Facebook distance itself from its many problems.

«A name change doesn’t suddenly erase the systemic issues plaguing the company,» Forrester vice president and research director Mike Proulx said in a statement. «If Meta doesn’t address its issues beyond a defensive and superficial attitude, those same issues will occupy the metaverse.»

Forrester, which surveyed 745 people across the US, Canada and the UK, said 75% of those polled disagreed that a new company name will increase their trust in Facebook.

The company says the rebranding is a refocusing of its corporate priorities. Founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook has spread beyond its roots as a social network. The tech giant now has virtual reality headsets, smart glasses and video chat devices. It’s also dabbling in finance with its Novi cryptocurrency wallet.

During the Connect keynote, Zuckerberg said he’s well aware of the risks that come with entering a new field. Facebook doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to protecting the privacy and safety of its users, and those issues won’t vanish in the metaverse.

«Every chapter brings new voices and new ideas but also new challenges, risks and disruption of established interests,» he said. «We’ll need to work together, from the beginning, to bring the best possible version of this future to life.»

A future utopia or dystopia?

Zuckerberg’s presentation painted a hopeful vision of the metaverse, filled with digital spaces for people to gather. Friends could fence using virtual swords, attend concerts from their homes or simply work together in virtual offices.

But Facebook will also have to deal with the same issues it grapples with on social media, including data privacy, security, child-exploitation dangers, and content moderation. Misinformation has been a widespread problem on Facebook’s namesake social network. Lies that spread on the platform have been blamed for the Jan. 6 insurrection and for hesitancy to get COVID vaccinations.

That wasn’t lost on lawmakers, who’ve been studying ways to regulate the company and its Big Tech peers.

«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!'» tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York.

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Sens. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, also warned Zuckerberg a name change wouldn’t deter lawmakers from pursuing Facebook. The two senators lead a subcommittee that recently met with Haugen to discuss her concerns about the social network.

Virtual worlds existed long before Facebook ramped up investment in VR and augmented reality after its purchase of headset maker Oculus in 2014. And the world of virtual reality already has a harassment problem. In 2007, Belgian police were looking into whether an avatar allegedly raped another character in Second Life, a virtual world developed by Linden Lab, according to The Washington Post.

Andrew «Boz» Bosworth, who’ll become the company’s new chief technology officer in 2022, said in a video chat before the conference that muting another user could help give people more control over their surroundings in VR if they’re being harassed. Facebook is also exploring ideas such as allowing users to share with authorities the last 10 to 15 seconds of a VR interaction they’ve had with another person. The company, though, will have to weigh the trade-offs between privacy and user safety, a dilemma it’s confronted before with end-to-end encrypted chats on messaging apps.

Another issue that may pop up is the use of avatars to impersonate others. One solution could be tying the avatar to an authenticated account or verifying identity in some other way.

A new name, however, won’t help Facebook dodge its old problems. Lawmakers, celebrities and critics took swings at the company after its big reveal.

«Changing their name doesn’t change reality: Facebook is destroying our democracy and is the world’s leading peddler of disinformation and hate,» said the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a group of well-known critics. «Their meaningless name change should not distract from the investigation, regulation and real, independent oversight needed to hold Facebook accountable.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 24, #713

Hints and answers for Connections for May 24, #713.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle has a fun variety of categories. The purple one appeals to my English major heart. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Goo-goo.

Green group hint: Not shirts.

Blue group hint: City that never sleeps.

Purple group hint: Acclaimed writers.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Baby gear.

Green group: Kinds of pants minus «s.»

Blue group: New York sports team members.

Purple group: Black women authors.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is baby gear. The four answers are bib, bottle, monitor and stroller.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is kinds of pants minus «s.» The four answers are capri, jean, jogger and slack.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is New York sports team members. The four answers are Jet, Met, Net and Ranger.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is black women authors. The four answers are Butler, Gay, Hooks and Walker.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, May 20

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 20.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword is a fun one, and now I’m singing the song from 1-Across in my head. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: «Pink ___ Club» (Chappell Roan hit)
Answer: PONY

5A clue: Instrument that might be made with a comb and wax paper
Answer: KAZOO

6A clue: How bedtime stories are often read
Answer: ALOUD

7A clue: On edge
Answer: TENSE

8A clue: Short Instagram video
Answer: REEL

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Less colorful
Answer: PALER

2D clue: Layer of the upper atmosphere
Answer: OZONE

3D clue: Totally pointless
Answer: NOUSE

4D clue: Hit a high note in a high place, perhaps
Answer: YODEL

5D clue: Kit ___ bar
Answer: KAT

How to play more Mini Crosswords

The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

Technologies

Want to Speak to Dolphins? Researchers Won $100,000 AI Prize Studying Their Whistling

The scientists studied a bottlenose dolphin community in Sarasota, Florida, uncovering evidence of language-like communications.

If any dolphins are reading this: hello!

A team of scientists studying a community of Florida dolphins has been awarded the first $100,000 Coller Dolittle Challenge prize, set up to award research in interspecies communication algorithms.

The US-based team, led by Laela Sayigh of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that a type of whistle that dolphins employ is used as an alarm. Another whistle they studied is used by dolphins to respond to unexpected or unfamiliar situations. The team used non-invasive hydrophones to perform the research, which provides evidence that dolphins may be using whistles like words, shared with multiple members of their communities.

Capturing the sounds is just the beginning. Researchers will use AI to continue deciphering the whistles to try to find more patterns.

«The main thing stopping us cracking the code of animal communication is a lack of data. Think of the 1 trillion words needed to train a large language model like ChatGPT. We don’t have anything like this for other animals,» said Jonathan Birch, a professor at the London School of Economics and Politics and one of the judges for the prize.

«That’s why we need programs like the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which has built up an extraordinary library of dolphin whistles over 40 years. The cumulative result of all that work is that Laela Sayigh and her team can now use deep learning to analyse the whistles and perhaps, one day, crack the code,» he said.

The award was part of a ceremony honoring the work of four teams from across the world. In addition to the dolphin project, researchers studied ways in which nightingales, marmoset monkeys and cuttlefish communicate.

The challenge is a collaboration between the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University. Submissions for next year open up in August.

Dolphins are just the beginning

Researching animals and trying to learn the secrets of their communication is nothing new; but AI is speeding up the creation of larger and lager datasets.

«Breakthroughs are inevitable,» says Kate Zacarian, CEO and co-founder of Earth Species Project, a California-based nonprofit that also works in breaking down language barriers with the animal world.

«Just as AI has revolutionized the fields of medicine and material science, we see a similar opportunity to bring those advances to the study of animal communication and empower researchers in this space with entirely new capabilities,» Zacarian said.

Zacarian applauded Sayigh’s team and their win and said it will help bring broader recognition to the study of non-human animal communication. It could also bring more attention to ways that AI can change the nature of this type of research.
«The AI systems aren’t just faster — they allow for entirely new types of inquiry,» she said. «We’re moving from decoding isolated signals to exploring communication as a rich, dynamic, and structure phenomenon — whish is a task that’s simply too big for our human brains, but possible for large-scale AI models.»

Earth Species recently released an open-source large audio language model for analyzing animal sounds called NatureLM-audio. The organization is currently working with biologists and ethologists to study species including carrion crows, orcas, jumping spiders and others and plans to release some of their findings later this year, Zacarian said.