No? The huge investment Facebook made in launching a virtual reality social media platform that Mark Zuckerberg predicted would take over the internet? It was so important that Zuck renamed his whole company to Meta! How could you forget?
Well, now it’s safe to purge your memory banks. The Metaverse is dead or dying.
Horizon Worlds launched in late 2021 and never found its footing. The platform never drew more than a few hundred thousand monthly active users, which isn’t enough for a project that consumed billions of dollars. Reality Labs, the Meta division responsible for VR and metaverse development, has accumulated nearly $80 billion in losses since 2020. In the fourth quarter alone it posted an operating loss of more than $6 billion.
The costs were always the argument for staying the course. Zuckerberg had promised the metaverse would reach a billion people and generate hundreds of billions in commerce. Pulling back meant admitting those projections were wrong.
I am impressed that Zuckerberg can throw away $80 billion on a bad gamble on a whim. Surely this means the stockholders will rise up and depose their incompetent leader…nah, no, you know that once you’re rich enough you are free from consequences.
You might hope that they’d learn something from this, but no — their future is instead going to be built on AI.
What changed the calculus was AI. When ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, Meta pivoted its public messaging fast. Its AI research division, long led by scientist Yann LeCun, gave the company a credible foundation to build on. Ad revenue improved. The stock recovered. By 2024, Meta had nearly tripled in value from its 2022 lows.
AI seems to have a niche in building stock market confidence and ad revenue, that’s nice. I think it’s going to face some consequences in the near future, as people realize they’ve been sold a shiny bill of goods, and maybe people will learn to tell Zuck to shut the fuck up.
Zuckerberg has something like a 50-61% of the voting shares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms, so no one can vote him out even if they tried. Our only hope is a collapse and mass migration away from all or at least most Meta properties…
I am quite certain that in the long run (hundreds to thousands of years) ‘AI’ will be extremely valuable, but in the short run – as a consumer product – it is a waste. Businesses should answer their own phones, cars should have human drivers, etc., because the glorified spellcheck is just not up to those tasks and won’t be any time soon.
Facebook was a good idea implemented very badly.
Everyone gets their own website to post cat photos and garden photos.
We we got was a predatory company that vacuums up as much of your personal information as possible and sells it and monetizes it.
I canceled my Facebook account over a decade ago and never missed it or go there without a compelling reason.
One thing I noticed is that almost none of my Boomer friends ever opened a Facebook account anyway.
The whole ‘metaverse’ was a stupid clone of SecondLife, which was also stupid. It was clear at the start.
Wow. So much stupid. Much money lit on fire.
Facebook is good if you like vintage aircraft.
I have also found plenty of people who share my views on social issues.
I do not consume much these days, so my personal information is worthless to the techbro billionaires.
AI will be useful for Facebook and other online services that depend on user uploaded content. Meta can have AI agents create and post content, so people’s feeds will always be filled with new material without actually having to have people post anything.
What Facebook doesn’t want is people using AI agents to read their Facebook account and filter it to posts by family and friends. They also don’t want AI agents creating Facebook accounts then reading and posting for other companies, that dilutes the value of advertising on Facebook. So there will be user agreements that ban that sort of thing and constant fighting to detect AI.
I realized last year that the Facebook algorithm has my number, as I was wasting far too much time reading superficial-but-amusing crap instead of working on Projects (of which I have enough to keep me busy longer than my expected remaining lifespan). So I cold-turkeyed in December, and now drop in once a month or so just to catch up on a few family and friends. To help me resist the temptation, I changed my password to Firefox-generated gibberish, logged out and deleted the entry from Firefox. The added effort of having to do a recovery each time is enough to discourage me — it now requires intent as opposed to being a spur-of-the-moment default behaviour.
I never understood the case for the metaverse.
The case for AI is pretty clear: fire all the workers. The numbers don’t work out and I expect a crash as the number of actual use cases is way smaller than what they’re building out for but at least the goal makes sense for making money.
Accordingly the latter is far more dangerous to society.
I remember the metaverse from Neal Stephenson’s book ‘Snow Crash’, Zuckerberg was inspired by the name. The only good thing Zuckerberg’s metaverse has done is give a good author more readers!
Snarki, child of Loki @ 4:
The thing is, it’s mostly funny money, or, I should say, bubble money. After all, much of the techie billionaires’ money is based on ridiculous and unrealistic evaluations (P/Es) of their companies. When the bubbles pop, say bye-bye. And this Metaverse situation is just a sign of the weakness heralding the Great Popping. Make sure to read Cory Doctorow on Pluralistic.
I actually don’t mind if billionaires throw their money in the trash. There are much worse things they could be doing with that.
I’m actually shocked how little I know about Horizon Worlds. Like, it’s a bad product, money down the drain, sure, all of that. But hundreds of thousands of monthly active users isn’t nothing, and the amount I’ve heard about it literally is nothing. I know more about Second Life and VRChat than I know about Horizon Worlds. Heck, I know more about Google Plus than I know about Horizon Worlds.
I’m willing to bet someone, somewhere…perhaps several ones and wheres…commented that iPhone was “money lit on fire”. At first it didn’t look that promising. Probably true of computers back in the 60s. And music…how many songs are published versus how many become hits, much less mega-hits? As I understand it, Apple Vision Pro isn’t taking off so far…maybe it’s too goofy, too expensive.
I do prowl around FB. Too much actually, but I have friends that I connect with through it, I follow some things of a political nature, and Reels…mainly standup comedy and music. I think FB’s reels algorithm randomly gives me interesting stuff that I like. I’ve tried to migrate to YouTube, but so far not as effective for me and in any case it’s just another mega-corp. (YouTube is better for actually learning stuff…some pretty good music teaching channels there.) I’ve also tried BlueSky and Substack but I don’t connect to either of them.
All that said, I thought the Metaverse idea was goofy and I wasn’t interested. Reality is bizarre enough…who needs cartoons.
Bluesky is the best mass market social media ever.
You have to have an account and customize and curate your feeds though.
It gets better and better the more you use it.
And it is both news and entertainment.
The Bluesky feed without an account is basically not much. There is a huge universe behind it though that you have to create.
And yes, I spend way too much time on Bluesky. Why do you ask?
raven @ #13
Oh, just wondering.
I believe by “account” you mean you pay for it. Also, I noticed a lot of costs for following someone so seemed like it might add up.
raven @ #13 redux — A old friend of mine bailed on FB and moved to BlueSky a year ago, so I was interested in giving it a try. I just haven’t had the time to dig into it.
Joining bluesky costs nothing. Following someone costs nothing.
Their stock market valuation depends on the fantasy that they will keep growing, fast. So they always need some next big thing that will provide that growth, and if you run out of good ideas you get something like the Metaverse.
PZ @ #16 — My bad. Confusing BlueSky with Substack.
starblue, they’ve been doing pretty well since 2005.
21 years of fantasy, no?
(Look at their stock price history, if you doubt me)
numerobis @8, Zuckerberg is so stupid, so incapable of an original idea, that he thought that, because the metaverse was depicted as attractive, useful, and the next level, in a quite good, very original and creative, sci-fi novel, he would just steal the whole thing. and it would work the exact same way in real life as it did in the novel.
robert79 @9, I’m not sure I’d say Zuck was inspired by Stephenson’s “metaverse” name. I would say that Zuck just stole it and didn’t bother to even try to cover up his plagiarism. It was that that really convinced me that all the charges that Zuck stole every aspect of Facebook, and every idea that went into it, from the people around him who actually thought of it, were all true.
Zuck has never had an original idea in his life. He’s lived on plagiarism and theft since he was an undergrad (and before that? Who knows?) Even more contemptible than some other software “geniuses”.
Zuck, for example, thought that the metaverse would be exactly as Stephenson described it, with avatars racing motorcycles at hundreds of kph, and visiting all kinds of different places, and doing all kinds of fun activities. So, he stole it.
He didn’t even had the brains to think of how it might work outside the pages of fiction, he thought he’d just make an exact copy of Stephenson’s. I think that he found, too late, that IRL human brains have two ways to determine whether they’re in motion or still, and how fast the motion is: input from the eyes and from the inner ear. When the input from these two conflict, the result is crippling vertigo.
Stephenson being a fiction writer, he didn’t have to deal with that, he ignored it with huge success. Zuck didn’t think of, or know, that, if one’s eyes in the metaverse are telling the brain that the body is in motion, like, riding a fun motorcycle, but the inner ear is telling the body that it’s not in motion, it’s sitting in front of a computer, the user is soon going to be curled up on the floor vomiting. And, sorry Zuck, there’s nothing to be done: human physiology is what it is, it’s not going to change for you.
So, the stupid and corrupt stealing of an idea that was brilliant in fiction was doomed from the start. Zuck’s meta would never have gone anywhere even without the advent of AI. That’s how shallow his brain is, just sink billions into it because someone else was creative and original about it in a sci-fi book and Zuck stole it wholesale.
Meta, the Ralphie Wiggum of Big Tech minus the charisma.
I was more shocked to hear that the Metaverse was still going. Dan Olsen ran his eagle eye over the Metaverse about 3 years ago and it was a digital graveyard then.
It has been said many times that Facebook is the best copy of Myspace on the internet.
This is my regular reminder that “the metaverse” was always nothing more than an attempt to take VR and turn it into an infinite money hose. You all may think you hated it, but VR users hated it even more.
And about that, VR is still doing just fine (or at least as good as can be expected given how AI has distorted the computer market). Yes, I know, every other week another hack tech journalist wants to do a story about how VR is failing… but they’ve been writing those stories for as long as VR has existed. And they ignore the VR apps that more people use. Facebook learned this a long time ago, people were buying their headsets because they were the cheapest thing on the market, but they were taking them and immediately installing VRchat on them, a competing social VR app. Horizons was a joke among VR users as well. Meanwhile the virtual events that I attend are only growing, and the schedule of published VR events that I follow is getting packed on the weekends. Our biggest concern, to be honest, is what happens with the apps as they grow. They’re having to navigate the same waters of censorship and moderation “won’t somebody think of the children” that everything else does.
For Garnetstar, who said above that VR can’t be used because human motion sense doesn’t work with it… it’s hard to say for sure, it may be that VR users are a self selected subpopulation of those who can tolerate it (I have a sneaking suspicion that gamers are more likely to tolerate it), but I think the problems with VR sickness aren’t nearly as fundamental, or as difficult to treat. I know what you’re saying, I’ve experienced it, but the thing is, I adapted to it quickly. It’s definitely possible for your brain to learn that the world is sliding around you and so your sense of balance stays reasonably unperturbed. There are actually a lot of small things you can do to make it better, and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the trouble is actually VR headsets that are poorly adjusted for the spacing of the user’s eyes. I went from having bad VR sickness to being able to ride around in a car while my friend drives at a breakneck pace, seemingly all by adjusting that one detail. A lot of people still have their limits, mine is flying. Flying a plane in VR is difficult, it makes me sick fast. The problem is it’s also an amazing experience, so I still try it on occasion. The real problem is the rotation. Cars are easier because they only rotate about one axis (for the most part), but planes roll. And rolling throws my stomach for a loop.
I’m not saying everyone has to use it, but I do get a little spiky when people start spouting off the popular wisdom about VR that is almost completely wrong. I’ve had people tell me that they have no desire for virtual experiences when they can have real experiences, and frankly.. I’m HAPPY for them. I wish reality met my expectations.
I’m currently away from my VR setup, but if I had it right now I could be in what we call a “portal” world. The tech journalists writing the canned “VR is dead” stories never seemed to notice the growth of this stuff, but there’s a massive real world party going on right now, and if I was in VR right now I could be standing in front of a virtual video screen showing a view of a bunch of dancing people. And the thing is, they’d see me too, they have a big projection screen. That’s why we call it a portal, it’s like a portal between realities.
The reason I really love this stuff, though, is how totally non corporate it is. And I’m making an already overly verbose comment longer to say it, it’s important. It’s not “the metaverse”. It’s a massive network of countless individual worlds mostly built by individuals or small groups. If I want a fancy custom avatar I might have to pay some money, but that money goes to the person who made it. Well, and some of it goes to the storefront they’re selling it on, that kind of thing is almost unavoidable. But if they wanted they could sell it directly to me. If I wanted that avatar customized to look how I want it and I didn’t know how to do it, I could pay a person to do that work for me.
VR is in the state the early Internet was. People were moving into it, metaphorically speaking, and figuring out what they could do. Businesses didn’t understand it yet, their early attempts were crude. It was a place of exhilarating freedom. VR is that now. I’m honestly shocked we’ve been able to have this for so long. I mean it would have been so easy to sell the only really decent social VR platform to the highest bidder and for it to turn into a carbon copy of Horizons, but it’s still largely open. It’s going through some growing pains that are scaring a lot of us, but for now it’s still an amazing place.
Don’t get me wrong, there are downsides… if you go to a public world, a popular place open to all, it’s basically only a matter of time before you hear some kid screaming racial slurs. I mostly go to events run by various groups of people, and it’s usually free and easy to join, but unless you know the right places to look you won’t find them. And if somebody does misbehave they can be ejected from the group.
But it can be amazing. I’ve been brought to tears more times than I care to count by experiences I’ve had in VR. The first time I saw a fireworks show synced up to music I was overwhelmed. It’s just that it was the end of a night of entertainment and I was with a small group of friends including someone who doesn’t live in my state. But we were all there together, sharing the moment, one last experience before it was all over. For an example of how VR can be better than reality, something interesting happened with the fireworks shows. Sometimes they had the usual loud fireworks noises, but not always. Some people gave the fireworks soft, gentle sounds instead. They made them sound gentle for people with sensory issues about loud fireworks! One time I was given the option of soft or loud, and the thing about VR is that each person can set it individually, even if we’re together. I’m not the kind of person who takes selfies.. but I took a picture of me and my friends watching the fireworks, and even if it’s just a bunch of rendered pixels, it’s still special to me.
[related]
Likewise, we complain about AI…but the problem is really the hacky stupid cartoon of AI the venture capitalists have been peddling. LLMs and Big Data are actually pretty powerful tools, when they aren’t used to generate poor simulacra of humans.
lol This is hilarious. Meta was supposed to be a big thing, as well as the “next thing” in virtual spaces. By contrast, Second Life, which I haven’t been on in forever, as of the latest article I could find, has around 600,000 active users still (despite not being much different than it was back when it started). The top number of users it has “ever” had was around 800,000. So, Zuck’s suck is crashing, while the original, which doesn’t even count all the “home brew” clones that likely exist out there still (of which many existed, and probably still do), has barely had a hickup. Oh, and weirdly, AI hasn’t “saved it”, or “made it better”. lol
Oh, also, I take a bit of a minor offense to it having been “stupid”. There where issues that I am not sure where ever resolved (for example, it sucked, and probably still does, at trying to copy first person shooters. That being said, artists could do some incredible things making virtual art displays, of sorts, virtual “escape room” types stuff (which got easier when they implemented features that could track stuff for such an environment easier), roleplay in a 3D space (with some limitations, again one of those being that if you wanted to simulate combat, well…), etc. It had its uses, and there where, and probably still are today, things like yearly fund drives, which included virtual spaces, made by artists, to explore, sort of “booths”, show casing ideas, or even mini-theme park type things, which included was to donate, and so on.
Even more than with AI, it has its uses, and some interesting things that are kind of worth seeing. The problem was always that the limitations of the technology held it back from being everything it had promised, and when, if you are a gamer, literally even the worst console/PC game often worked better than the virtual spaces, at least if it was anything other than a variation of Myst, where you didn’t have to do any sort of direct interaction with other players. For what it did well, it does well. And, maybe some of that has been fixed since, but the dual problem of the cost of renting a server to host content, plus the limitations of what it could do for certain things, left it perpetually behind games, including ones using servers themselves for multiplayer, that did everything else better.
@Snarki, Nomad, Kagehi:
Yeah, Second Life is still around, and still active; I know several people who are on it regularly, including one person who runs a DJ set weekly through SL with a dance club.
As for portal worlds, that’s definitely a thing. I was just at a convention this weekend, and some of the folks there actually built a replica of a good chunk of the convention hotel in VRChat, and had display screens and cameras in a couple of spots so that people could really ‘attend’ the convention remotely and wave and chat to the folks that were on site, in addition to there being a whole parallel set of tracks and dealer’s room on the VR side of things. Needless to say, a lot of that really got a big boost when such conventions were shut down during the early years of Covid-19, but there are still conventions that run portals like that as well as a few virtual-only events.
As others have noted, the problem with the Metaverse is that they were trying to do a corporate-controlled money-farm version of Second Life… and Second Life itself gave up on that over a decade ago (and hadn’t tried as hard as Meta did, because Linden was always a lot more ‘isn’t this cool’ than ‘isn’t this a great product’), because it just wasn’t actually feasible with current technology and internet delays.
(One of the more famous stories about the early days of Second Life was when some art student did a poster parodying the Second Life advertisements with ‘Get a First Life’. The response from Linden Labs was a ‘proceed and permit’ letter rather than ‘cease and desist’, and they loved the parody so much they retroactively gave the ‘First Life’ creator a licence to legally use their logo on his poster.)