Meta sounds like the Hebrew word for “dead,” but the company lives

A year ago, on Oct. 28, 2021, the company formerly known as Facebook announced it was changing its name to Meta. 

The company detailed why — and we’ll get to that — but a recent Instagram post offered another, unfounded explanation. 

"ead entity," the Oct. 27 post said, apparently misspelling "dead." "Assets seized along with the media companies…. That why Fakebook name change to meta….it means dead n Hebrew…..Everything is going to go down…so prepare Plan for spending time in nature and building a new community where you live."

The post includes a hashtag associated with QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement that in 2020 Facebook banned across all of its platforms. It was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Though the post doesn’t specify who supposedly seized Meta’s assets, we found no evidence to support the claim that anyone or any entity did. There are no news or government reports, nor statements from the company stating as much. 

It’s true that Meta sounds like the feminine form of the Hebrew word for "dead," a rebranding that drew the scorn of some Hebrew speakers in 2021. 

After Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name during an online presentation on Oct. 28, 2021, the company said in a statement that the change "brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand." 

"Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses," the statement said. 

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"California lawmakers are planning to push free abortion pills on all students across the state as part of a ‘super progressive’ new policy."

The New York Times reported that the rebranding reflects how Zuckerberg "plans to refocus his Silicon Valley company on what he sees as the new digital frontier, which is the unification or disparate digital worlds into something called the metaverse." 

The metaverse, the Times said in a separate explainer, refers to "a variety of virtual experiences, environmental and assets that gained momentum during the online-everything shift of the pandemic." 

The Washington Post, meanwhile, noted that the name change came as the company was trying to "distance itself from a social-media business embroiled in crisis and rebrand itself as a forward-looking creator of a new digital world."

As of Oct. 28, 2022, Zuckerberg was still at the helm of Meta as its founder, chairman and chief executive officer. The company’s assets haven’t been seized, and it’s not dead. 

We rate this post False.