Facebook’s old motto was “move fast and break things.” Boy, is it breaking things now.
In April, Meta rolled out a full-on branding push for Meta AI, launched a standalone AI app, and started pumping out ads about all the amazing things people supposedly can do with their chatbot. Unfortunately for everyone, The Wall Street Journal reports that the bot lets users cosplay being a sexual predator with celebrity voices.
In a statement, Meta called the Journal’s testing “manipulative and unrepresentative of how most users engage with AI companions,” sliding right past the horrific fact that its tool can even fake this. Meta seems to be done apologizing for any consequences of its actions. The short-term PR benefit, however, may set up some long-term risks.
Mastering the pivot, losing the plot
In 2021, Facebook felt stale, and the metaverse was the next big thing. So the company rebranded as Meta. Now, AI is the new hotness, and the metaverse is an afterthought. So Meta’s chasing something new again — but without a clear story, just another pivot. And it’s not just the tech that’s a mess. It’s the narrative.
Ask 10 people what Meta stands for now and you’ll get 12 answers. The company has no cohesive story, so it’s running from the old one without landing the new one. That’s narrative risk, something we obsess over as a tech PR agency. (Sterling’s CEO has a lot more to say about this soon.)
3 signals that Meta’s narrative isn’t landing
Neither Wall Street nor investors like messy business narratives, but users and advertisers are struggling to follow along.
- People are confused about Meta’s purpose. Pew Research found users are unclear on what the company now stands for, especially among older users who associate it solely with Facebook.
- Trust in Meta is low and dropping. Morning Consult shows Meta ranks near the bottom in tech company trust. Statista found that only 22% of U.S. adults view the company positively.
- Advertisers are skeptical of the narrative. Marketing Dive reports that brand confusion and reputational baggage are making advertisers hesitant to buy in — if they’re allowed to at all.
Handing out gas cards to pyromaniacs
It’s easy to spot this kind of risk in a small company. Maybe their site is vague. Or sales and marketing are saying different things. Or a single tweet from a customer frames the brand better than the brand can. If they fail to tell their story better, the brand and business may just fade away.
Big companies suffer loudly. Their narratives get distorted, co-opted, or turned into punchlines. And everyone hears about it. Meta, for all its scale, still hasn’t landed a clear story for its AI ambitions. So others are telling it for them — journalists, critics, comedians, Reddit threads.
Meta’s response seems to be the equivalent of handing out free gas cards at support groups for fire-starting fetishists. The cost of a broken narrative isn’t just reputational — it’s ethical. Strategic. Maybe even existential.