It’s not often you see big public companies survive a scandal without taking major action, such as booting the CEO. Think Boeing and the 737 Max drama, which prompted the resignation of CEO Dennis Muilenburg in 2019, or the uproar over Uber’s corporate culture that precipitated the exit of founding CEO Travis Kalanick in 2017. A lesser option, for companies controlled by the CEO, is a restructuring. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp broke in two in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at the company’s U.K. newspapers.
Facebook, confronted with a seemingly never-ending scandal around how it deals with problematic content on its site, is taking a less disruptive approach—a change of name to Meta Platforms Inc. That’ll solve everything, right? (Travis Kalanick is probably wondering right now why he didn’t simply change Uber’s name to Taxi and refuse to leave.) CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new name on Thursday, and in an interview with The Information, he made it clear that the more standard crisis responses, such as his departure or a breakup, weren’t options (at least not in the near term).