UK minister tells Meta rebranding doesnt work, vows to fast-track criminal sanctions for Big Tech execs
Summary
LONDON — A top U.K. official has slammed Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, for its rebrand, and promised to bring forward criminal sanctions for social media bosses under new laws tackling harmful content on the web. "Rebranding doesnt work," Nadine Dorries, Britains minister for digital, culture, media and sport, told lawmakers Thursday at a hearing on the Online Safety Bill. The whistleblower, Frances Haugen, appeared in U.K. Parliament last month, telling lawmakers that regulators have a "slight window of time" to act on the spread of hate speech and other harmful content on Facebook. Meta says its name change is about a pivot to what it calls the "metaverse," a kind of shared virtual reality in which multiple users can interact with each other as avatars. Dorries said Meta should give those extra workers the task of "abiding by your terms and conditions and removing your harmful algorithms" instead.