Facebook is changing its tune about government regulation.
Meta, the new name for parent company of Facebook, released a 30 second TV/online spot saying they want Washington to regulate them.
“Federal legislation can give our platforms and other platforms guidelines so we can have a consistent approach,” Rochelle, a member of the Facebook Privacy team, said in the video.
However, critics say Facebook is not fooling anyone. The company has been under fire by lawmakers in the United States and in other countries about privacy rights. For years, they've made money by selling users' data.
Some are speculating Meta doesn’t want to deal with individual state laws. States like Texas have tried to limit the company’s ability to censor free speech and gather users’ personal data.
“They’re just going to continue to grow and expand, and it’s going to be based on how much information they can collect from you and how they can then monetize that information,” political consultant Luke Macias said. “I do think they are at least giving some type of effort to distract from their entire business model.”
He adds lawmakers in Washington are concerned Meta is getting too big.
“There’s definitely a bipartisan mood to try to at this point it’s not even to decrease the size so much as it is to not let them expand,” Macias explained. “Hopefully, that turns into an even broader discussion about whether these things should be broken up.”
The parent company now owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other subsidiaries.