Still, Schmidt says he opposes trying to regulate the technology industry
Facebook’s conduct disclosed in leaked documents is “pretty concerning,” said former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who called for companies in the tech industry to show more restraint.
The documents — shared with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress by whistle-blower Frances Haugen and obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and other media outlets — show that Meta struggled to contain hate speech and misinformation. “The disturbing thing is that people have said a long time ago that Facebook was doing this, but people said, ‘Well, they didn’t understand or they didn’t measure it’,” Schmidt said. “And what we learnt in those disclosures is that these companies — and Facebook in particular — knew what it was doing.”
The company’s rebranding move to Meta speaks to a new emphasis on building a metaverse — a virtual-reality social space that would eventually take over from the web and app social services of today. Meta said it will also seek to renew its appeal to younger users, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying executives will “make serving young adults their North Star, rather than optimising for the larger number of older people”.