Elevation Partners co-founder Roger McNamee says the social media giant’s latest business venture is a distraction from recent revelations.
Facebook announced Thursday that the social media giant has changed its name to Meta as part of its rollout of a virtual-reality space called the metaverse.
But early Facebook investor and Elevation Partners co-founder Roger McNamee exposed on “The Claman Countdown” that the rebrand had not been a long-term project and was only thrown together to distract the public from whistleblower Frances Haugen’s revealing testimony.
“Everybody should keep this firmly in mind – this was not something that they’ve been thinking about for a long period of time,” he said. “This is something they’ve put together in desperation to try to divert attention from the inevitable pushback that the whistleblower has caused by providing evidence of irresponsible management and potential felonies committed by Facebook in pursuit of profit.”
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McNamee suggested Facebook is attempting to distract journalists and policymakers alike while insulating CEO Mark Zuckerberg from being held accountable for “all the harm” he’s caused on company watch. He warned journalists and policymakers to keep a close eye on the evidence released by the whistleblower.
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“Those are internal documents created by the best people inside Facebook shared with all of the employees that management disregarded consciously in pursuit of profit and disregard, if you will, for the public interest,” he said.
In an op-ed for TIME, McNamee ripped into Facebook, warning that the whistleblower documents are the “inevitable result of a dangerous design” and Congress turning its back on the case would cause “catastrophes” beyond recovery.
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McNamee described that the fundamental problem is Facebook undermining democracy by building a business model with two characteristics: having “perfect” information on a network of three billion people and using a recommendation algorithm to “manipulate our behavior.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen fencing in the “Metaverse” with an Olympic gold medal fencer during a live-streamed virtual and augmented reality conference to announce the rebrand of Facebook as Meta, in this screen grab taken from a video released October 28, 2021. Facebook/Handout via REUTERS
“The result is that a lot of scams and crazy ideas have been thrust from the fringes of society into the mainstream, and as a consequence, half the country can’t talk to the other half,” he said. “We don’t have any shared sense of what it means to be an American. And that’s unbelievably dangerous. It’s not good for anybody. Not left, not right.”
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The Silicon Valley investor explained that even though creating virtual reality has been a Big Tech dream for the last 25 years, Zuckerberg’s invasive approach by controlling the whole environment will allow the company to “intrude” further on the intimate parts of our lives.
Facebook did not respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.
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