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A pedestrian walks in front of a new logo and the name ‘Meta’ on the sign in front of Facebook headquarters on October 28, 2021 in Menlo Park, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

With its name change to Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook is trying to eliminate what some employees have called a “brand tax” on apps like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding on Thursday, following a brutal seven weeks of document dumps that showed Facebook knew of the harm its products cause and has refused to address them. But the brand tax dates as far back as the 2016 presidential election, when Facebook turned into a haven of hateful content and misinformation.

Facebook’s other services, most notably Instagram and Messenger, have struggled to distance themselves from the constant embarrassment that’s plagued their parent company over the past half-decade, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Brand separation became particularly difficult in 2019, when Facebook announced it would tag all of its services with Facebook at the end of their names. Messenger became Messenger from Facebook, and the other apps turned into Instagram from Facebook and WhatsApp from Facebook.

Facebook said at the time that the rebranding was intended to provide clarity to users. The same was true for its Oculus virtual reality unit and business software offering Workplace, which also got the “from Facebook” label.

“This brand change is a way to better communicate our ownership structure to the people and businesses who use our services to connect, share, build community and grow their audiences,” the company said in a press release on Nov. 4, 2019.

But behind closed doors, Facebook wasn’t expressing concern about consumer confusion. Rather, the company was trying to restore the strength of its name after a series of public relations setbacks, most notably the Cambridge Analytica data hijacking scandal in 2018, several former employees told CNBC.

Facebook’s own brand was in the dumps. Zuckerberg decided to consolidate the branding because he thought associating Facebook with the company’s less-sullied services would help, said the former employees, who asked not to be named because the information was confidential. 

With an image of himself on a screen in the background, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill October 23, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Some employees advised Zuckerberg to follow the path taken by Google, which created the parent company name Alphabet in 2015, rather than attaching Facebook to everything, sources said.

Zuckerberg’s decision to instead showcase Facebook was not driven by data. On the contrary, he was presented with research showing that associating any of the company’s products with the Facebook brand caused trust to drop, said one former executive.

Another employee said that was seen in research done for Facebook’s video-calling device, Portal, announced in 2018. Data indicated that putting the name Facebook on it would reduce public trust. The company went with the name Facebook Portal anyway.

When asked for a comment for this story, a spokeswoman for the company directed CNBC to a Thursday post from Meta Chief Marketing Officer Alex Schultz.

“In 2019, we rolled out new branding that linked together all of our products, but still kept the Facebook name for both the company and our original app,” Schultz wrote. “But over time it was clear that the shared Facebook name could cause confusion, not only with people using products such as WhatsApp or Instagram, but also with constituencies we work with. Helping people have clarity when something is coming from the company versus the Facebook app is an important reason for this change.”

Instagram hurt the most

Instagram was hit particularly hard by the 2019 rebranding.

The photo app is used mostly by teens and young people, who have long had a negative view of Facebook. The “big blue app,” as Facebook is known, was seen as the place where parents and weird uncles go to share stories and comment on their relatives’ posts.

Instagram’s marketing employees began seeing, through quarterly brand tracking results, that the new label was causing harm.

They tried to make the “from Facebook” font smaller, not use it at all or play with the colors in a way that would hide the Facebook name, ex-employees said. Ultimately, they were overruled, according to one former employee.

Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook had turned Instagram into a screaming success since acquiring it for $1 billion in 2012, and it was time for Instagram to give back, a former executive recalled. 

Instagram marketers would eventually be measured by how well they tied the brands together. It was mandated by Zuckerberg and non-negotiable.

Messenger, by contrast, was given permission to create some sense of separation, according to multiple employees. 

Unlike Instagram, Oculus and WhatsApp, which were all acquired, Messenger was homegrown. Facebook turned it into a separate app in 2014. To attract younger users, Messenger was given the “blessing” a year ago to take some steps to improve the brand, two former employees said.

Messenger rolled out a new logo last year with a gradient color, predominantly purple, similar to Instagram’s logo. It was part of the Messenger team’s effort to position the app for Millennials and Gen Z users, who have been flocking to other services like TikTok.

Removing the Facebook name

As Meta, there’s no guarantee that Facebook’s brand tax dissipates.

But Zuckerberg has at least changed his approach, less than two years after adding “from Facebook” to all of his company’s main services.

The company has already started rebranding several of its units. The hardware division, previously known as Facebook Reality Labs, will now be called Reality Labs. The payments division, which was known as F2 (Facebook Financial), will now be Novi, the name of the company’s cryptocurrency wallet product. 

Zuckerberg remains defiant following a series of document leaks by ex-employee Frances Haugen, the whistleblower, and the many stories that followed from the Wall Street Journal and other publications. One of the most notable stories showed that the company knew Instagram was detrimental to teenagers’ mental health and was doing little about it. 

“My view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” Zuckerberg said after the company’s quarterly earnings report earlier this week.

Some of the documents released showed that the number of teenage users of the Facebook app in the U.S. has declined by 13% since 2019, with a projected drop of 45% over the next two years, according to The Verge. Additionally, Facebook researchers found that the company was not expecting people born after 2000 to join the social network until they were 24 or 25 years old, if they ever joined, Bloomberg reported.

Facebook addressed that issue on Monday in its earnings report. The company said it would begin pivoting both Instagram and Facebook to feature more videos from the Reels product in an effort to attract young users.

Zuckerberg said the company will try to make all of its services appealing to young adults, but he acknowledged that “this shift will take years, not months, to fully execute.”

Moving away from the Facebook brand is the first big step.

WATCH: The metaverse is things you can do with goggles strapped to your face

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AI could affect 40% of jobs and widen inequality between nations, UN warns

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AI could affect 40% of jobs and widen inequality between nations, UN warns

Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence is projected to reach $4.8 trillion in market value by 2033, but the technology’s benefits remain highly concentrated, according to the U.N. Trade and Development agency.

In a report released on Thursday, UNCTAD said the AI market cap would roughly equate to the size of Germany’s economy, with the technology offering productivity gains and driving digital transformation. 

However, the agency also raised concerns about automation and job displacement, warning that AI could affect 40% of jobs worldwide. On top of that, AI is not inherently inclusive, meaning the economic gains from the tech remain “highly concentrated,” the report added. 

“The benefits of AI-driven automation often favour capital over labour, which could widen inequality and reduce the competitive advantage of low-cost labour in developing economies,” it said. 

The potential for AI to cause unemployment and inequality is a long-standing concern, with the IMF making similar warnings over a year ago. In January, The World Economic Forum released findings that as many as 41% of employers were planning on downsizing their staff in areas where AI could replicate them.  

However, the UNCTAD report also highlights inequalities between nations, with U.N. data showing that 40% of global corporate research and development spending in AI is concentrated among just 100 firms, mainly those in the U.S. and China. 

Furthermore, it notes that leading tech giants, such as Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft — companies that stand to benefit from the AI boom — have a market value that rivals the gross domestic product of the entire African continent. 

This AI dominance at national and corporate levels threatens to widen those technological divides, leaving many nations at risk of lagging behind, UNCTAD said. It noted that 118 countries — mostly in the Global South — are absent from major AI governance discussions. 

UN recommendations 

But AI is not just about job replacement, the report said, noting that it can also “create new industries and and empower workers” — provided there is adequate investment in reskilling and upskilling.

But in order for developing nations not to fall behind, they must “have a seat at the table” when it comes to AI regulation and ethical frameworks, it said.

In its report, UNCTAD makes a number of recommendations to the international community for driving inclusive growth. They include an AI public disclosure mechanism, shared AI infrastructure, the use of open-source AI models and initiatives to share AI knowledge and resources. 

Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution.

“AI can be a catalyst for progress, innovation, and shared prosperity – but only if countries actively shape its trajectory,” the report concludes. 

“Strategic investments, inclusive governance, and international cooperation are key to ensuring that AI benefits all, rather than reinforcing existing divides.”

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Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand ‘off the charts,’ says Altimeter’s Gerstner

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Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand 'off the charts,' says Altimeter's Gerstner

Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner is buying Nvidia

Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.

“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.

President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.

The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.

Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.

Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”

He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.

“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”

WATCH: Brad Gerstner is buying Nvidia

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YouTube announces Shorts editing features amid potential TikTok ban

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YouTube announces Shorts editing features amid potential TikTok ban

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok. 

The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.

Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.

The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google

Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement. 

Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.

“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”

WATCH: TikTok is a digital Trojan horse, says Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass

TikTok is a digital Trojan horse, says Hayman Capital's Kyle Bass

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