I'm Margaret Tulliv. Welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story. It's Tuesday,

November 2nd, and we're talking about Facebook's rebrand.

Following a slew of new revelations about Facebook's internal decision-making problems, one big question

emerged. Is the tech giant poised to face greater accountability anytime soon? Well, all signs point right

now to know, from Congress's dysfunction to the millions of Americans who are basically shrugging

and continuing to use Facebook in their everyday lives. But there's an even bigger sign that Facebook expects that really in the future it's going to be

expanding its role into people's lives.

And that's the decision to change the name of the parent company that owns the social media

platforms, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to meta.

This draws on the idea that there is a metaverse. This isn't just

about trying to change one company's bad news narrative or courting fickle young people or new

investors. It's a bet on futurist vision that what we think of today as the real world, the online

world, and the virtual world, that these are all increasingly going to be blurring

together as our technology evolves. And that new reality would be the metaverse. Facebook's saying

that this is not a matter of if, but of how, when, and who gets to build it. And of course,

Facebook is planning to lead that charge, in spite of the relentless criticism of its current decision-making.

So, to understand what all this could mean, we're joined by Axios' managing editor for technology, Scott Rosenberg.

We're back with Scott Rosenberg, Axios' managing editor of technology. Hi, Scott.

Hey, Margaret. Scott, let's start with the name, Meta.

Boyle us down for us.

Why is Facebook changing it?

Facebook is a unique moment in its history.

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