PARIS: Facebook will face intense scrutiny over its future at next week’s Web Summit, with its “Meta” rebrand and a damaging whistleblower scandal set to dominate discussions at one of the world’s biggest tech conferences.
The gathering of the global tech elite in Portugal’s capital Lisbon is set to welcome some 40,000 people from Monday evening through Thursday.
That’s down from 70,000 in a non-pandemic year — but Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave said there was nonetheless a “strange euphoria” around the preparations after Covid-19 forced the cancellation of the 2020 edition.
“Everybody’s been cooped up for so long. A big conference equates to a bit of a party,” he told AFP.
“Plus, there’s so many people who’ve built businesses that didn’t exist two years ago, and they’re now fully-fledged unicorns.”
Executives from around 70 so-called unicorns — start-ups valued at over $1 billion — will be present at this year’s Web Summit.
But the troubles at Facebook, and its attempts to move on, are likely to garner the most attention.
Frances Haugen, the former Facebook engineer who leaked a trove of internal documents to international media, is due to speak on the opening night.
The “Facebook Papers” show executives knew of their sites’ potential for harm on numerous fronts, including Instagram’s impact on teens’ mental health and deepening alarm over misinformation in the developing world.
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