[28] Writers at TechCrunch, on the other hand, expressed skepticism, stating, "That's a big multiple to live up to, and Facebook will likely need to add bold new revenue streams to justify the mammoth valuation.

[36] On May 22, 2012, regulators from Wall Street's Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced that they had begun to investigate whether banks underwriting Facebook had improperly shared information only with select clients rather than the general public.

[49] Depending on when it would receive approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory authority to operate as a payments service, the Libra Association had planned to launch a limited format cryptocurrency in 2021.

[53] Following a period of intense scrutiny and damaging whistleblower leaks, news started to emerge on October 21, 2021 about Facebook's plan to rebrand the company and change its name.

[15][54] In the Q3 2021 Earnings Call on October 25, Mark Zuckerberg discussed the ongoing criticism of the company's social services and the way it operates, and pointed to the pivoting efforts to building the metaverse – without mentioning the rebranding and the name change.

[16][56] "Meta" had been registered as a trademark in the United States in 2018 (after an initial filing in 2015) for marketing, advertising, and computer services, by a Canadian company that provided big data analysis of scientific literature.

[92] Meta removed the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in February 2024, citing repeated violations of its Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy.

An Iraqi nonprofit Tech4Peace’s founder, Aws al-Saadi helped Ahmed-Adnan and others, but the restoration process was slow, leading to significant financial losses for many victims, including prominent figures like Ammar al-Hakim.

This decision followed allegations that RT and its employees funneled $10 million through shell companies to secretly fund influence campaigns on various social media channels.

[103] On 4 October 2024, Meta announced about its new AI model called Movie Gen, capable of generating realistic video and audio clips based on user prompts.

Meta stated it would not release Movie Gen for open development, preferring to collaborate directly with content creators and integrate it into its products by the following year.

[104] On October 31, 2024, ProPublica published an investigation into deceptive political advertisement scams that sometimes use hundreds of hijacked profiles and facebook pages run by organized networks of scammers.

[107] In December 2024, Meta announced that, beginning February 2025, they would require advertisers to run ads about financial services in Australia to verify information about who are the beneficiary and the payer in a bid to regulate scams.

[111] In February 2025, Meta announced plans to roll back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, citing shifts in the "legal and policy landscape" in the United States.

The decision followed reports that CEO Mark Zuckerberg sought to align the company more closely with the incoming Trump administration, including changes to content moderation policies and executive leadership.

[130] The lobbying team includes top congressional aide John Branscome, who was hired in September 2021, to help the company fend off threats from Democratic lawmakers and the Biden administration.

[132] In August 2024, Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Jim Jordan indicating that during the COVID-19 pandemic the Biden administration repeatedly asked Meta to limit certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, on Facebook and Instagram.

According to reports, LGBTQ+ posts, including those that simply celebrated pride or advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, were flagged and removed for reasons that some critics argue were vague or inconsistently applied.

In March 2020, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) sued Facebook, for significant and persistent infringements of the rule on privacy involving the Cambridge Analytica fiasco.

FTC alleges that Facebook holds monopolistic power in the U.S. social networking market and seeks to force the company to divest from Instagram and WhatsApp to break up the conglomerate.

[156] William Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, argued the case will be difficult to win as it would require the government to create a counterfactual argument of an internet where the Facebook-WhatsApp-Instagram entity did not exist, and prove that harmed competition or consumers.

[159][160] In June 2022, 8 lawsuits were filed across the U.S. over the allege that excessive exposure to platforms including Facebook and Instagram has led to attempted or actual suicides, eating disorders and sleeplessness, among other issues.

The company noted that tools have been developed for parents to keep track of their children's activity on Instagram and set time limits, in addition to Meta's "Take a break" reminders.

In addition, the company is providing resources specific to eating disorders as well as developing AI to prevent children under the age of 13 signing up for Facebook or Instagram.

[167] In October 2024, Meta Platforms faced lawsuits in Japan from 30 plaintiffs who claimed they were defrauded by fake investment ads on Facebook and Instagram, featuring false celebrity endorsements.

In an op-ed in The New York Times, Hughes said he was concerned that Zuckerberg had surrounded himself with a team that did not challenge him, and that it is the U.S. government's job to hold him accountable and curb his "unchecked power".

'"[225] Ex-Facebook employee Frances Haugen and whistleblower behind the Facebook Papers responded to the rebranding efforts by expressing doubts about the company's ability to improve while led by Mark Zuckerberg, and urged the chief executive officer to resign.

[226] In November 2021, a video published by Inspired by Iceland went viral, in which a Zuckerberg look-alike promoted the Icelandverse, a place of "enhanced actual reality without silly looking headsets".

[227] In a December 2021 interview, SpaceX and Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk said he could not see a compelling use-case for the VR-driven metaverse, adding: "I don't see someone strapping a frigging screen to their face all day.

Yet switching to the social apps, where you mingle with strangers also using VR headsets, it was at times predatory and vile.Eccles described being sexually harassed by another user, as well as "accents from all over the world, American, Indian, English, Australian, using racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic language".