Discussion

• @kevinroose Kevin Roose on x

  “The Metaverse” was a 5-year experiment conducted by Harvard University for the purpose of transferring wealth from Meta shareholders to employees who pretended it was fun to go to meetings in a VR headset. We thank you for your participation.

• @paultassi Paul Tassi on x

  Imagine renaming your company something you now have to routinely admit is an utter failure every few months with layoffs and shutdowns

• @canteverdie @canteverdie on x

  mark zuckerberg should get the olympic gold medal of burning money away

• @kyliebytes Kylie Robison on x

  i guess the idea just didn't have legs

• @anisha_moonka Anish Moonka on x

  Mark Zuckerberg sold 7 million AI glasses last year while everyone was laughing at his metaverse. The $80 billion number in this tweet is slightly off. Reality Labs has posted $84 billion in total losses since 2020, per Meta's Q4 2025 earnings. But here's what the dunks leave

• @wdavidmarx W. David Marx on x

  I know that vaporware / pivoting is core to Silicon Valley but how many more data points do we need to remember Zuck fundamentally as a serial bullshitter whose grand announcements and launches never ever amounted to anything? He acquired/copied all of his successes after FB.

• @willsolfiac Will Solfiac on x

  I'd love to read a good explanation of how on earth Facebook and Zuckerberg thought that going all in on the ‘metaverse’ was ever a sound business decision. Did he develop a cocaine habit or something? Can it really be that the guy who was so smart with facebook, instagram and

• @malonebarry Barry Malone on x

  In honour of the closure of the metaverse, I would like to re-up one of the worst videos ever recorded.

• @abhijitwt Abhijit on x

  > be Zuckerberg. > rename Facebook to Meta in 2021. > declare the metaverse is the future. > pour $80B+ into Reality Labs. > build Horizon Worlds. > legless avatars, empty lobbies, low retention. > insist this is the next internet. > 2024-2025. > losses pile up. > investors get […

• @deanwampler.com Dean Wampler on bluesky

  I would have taken a fraction of the $80B Zuckerberg spent on this effort to tell him years ago that it was doomed from the beginning, but he didn't ask...  [embedded post]

• @maeve @maeve on bluesky

  “capitalism is the most efficient system btw” [embedded post]

• @shadowmanos Manos Nikolaidis on bluesky

  When you have a product that most people hate, but are stuck with it for various reasons, so it prints money for you to waste.  [embedded post]

• @edzitron.com Ed Zitron on bluesky

  i was actively mocked in 2021 when I said the metaverse was bullshit, and in 2023 when i said the metaverse is dead.  This should've been a wake-up moment for the tech media that they were being had, but nothing has changed as a result  —  www.businessinsider.com/metaverse- de...…

• @daniloc.xyz @daniloc.xyz on bluesky

  makes ya wonder how that AI thing is gonna turn out for him [embedded post]

• @tommysalty @tommysalty on bluesky

  Ok, so another widely hyped pipe dream that was rightly mocked is over, a lot of resources wasted on something that no one wanted or needed.  —  And I guess they want to focus on another thing that's almost exactly that.  [embedded post]

• @tabletopminions @tabletopminions on bluesky

  So he wasted $80B on cartoon avatars that nobody liked, and now he'll probably waste even more on AI - which will largely be most useless.  And yet... some people seem to listen to him? [embedded post]

• Gameranx Ryan Parreno on x

  Facebook Parent Company Meta Is Shutting Down Their Metaverse VR Game Horizon Worlds

• r/StockMarket r on reddit

  Meta is shutting down VR social platform Horizon Worlds in further pivot away from the metaverse

• r/news r on reddit

  Meta is shutting down VR social platform Horizon Worlds in further pivot away from the metaverse

• @rcbregman Rutger Bregman on x

  10% of ALL Meta revenue comes from ads for scams & banned goods. $16 BILLION a year. Zuckerberg has known about this for a long time. But he has *deliberately* decided to do nothing about it. Why is Mark Zuckerberg not in prison?

• @matvelloso Mat Velloso on x

  People giving Meta a hard time about this but honestly? Meta Quest is a great product. Probably the most successful VR product on the market. VR is hard. Still, far more reasonable than Microsoft Teams spending hundreds of engineers to put avatars on the product so you could

• @wallstmemes @wallstmemes on x

  If you're having a bad day, remember that someone paid $450,000 to live next to Snoop Dog in the metaverse

• @joeperticone Joe Perticone on x

  Wonder what they're up to [image]

• @ethanz Ethan Zuckerman on bluesky

  Re: Meta's retreat from the metaverse: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/t...  Told you so:  —  www.theatlantic.com/technology/ a...

• @arian_ghashghai Arian Ghashghai on x

  I'll go a step further: Horizon Worlds being shut down is the best news possible for consumer VR Meta's insistence to both own the platform (Quest + OS) and the first-party content (Horizon Worlds) created a palpable COI and routinely undercut third-party devs (i.e. the groups

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  Shutting down the Metaverse is like admitting your AI can't do amazing things. If you have infinite software development capability, just have your AI build an amazing metaverse.

• @xuwu Wu Xu on x

  Every so often, another clickbait headline shows up trying to dunk on XR. It is tiring. Let's just stick to the facts. Horizon Worlds VR probably cost around $2 billion at most. Start from the top. Reality Labs had around 14,000 people before. After the layoffs in January, it

• @vasuman Vas on x

  As someone who worked at Reality Labs: the Metaverse had real legs but was obliterated by middle management completely out of touch with how young people actually use technology. I built a V1 tool that game developers genuinely needed, and the moment it was done, it got shipped

• @jmdagdelen John Dagdelen on x

  Need to check Kevin here. Meta is not shutting down their metaverse project. Horizon worlds is just getting focused on mobile and desktop, like Roblox. Moreover, they are continuing their VR work and they plan to keep investing more in the coming years. All they are doing is

• @matthew_d_green Matthew Green on x

  Think how cool the Metaverse could have been if Meta AI worked.

• @heaney555 David Heaney on x

  I have some questions as to how exactly decisions are made at Meta.

• @reckless Nilay Patel on bluesky

  Incredible all timer hero for us today (and great Lina Khan interview by @vicmsong.bsky.social!) www.theverge.com/report/89682...  [image]

• @scottstein Scott Stein on bluesky

  Good story on the mistakes that happen when big tech buys things and then abandons them by @vicmsong.bsky.social www.theverge.com/report/89682...

• @boztank Boz on x

  Seems like this is pretty much an annual tradition now so putting this here so I can tap the sign later... [image]

• @girldrawsghosts @girldrawsghosts on x

  It's so funny that i have literally never seen another image of the metaverse. Like it came out, right? Did metaverse even happen? I have not seen a single person ever tweet about it

• @jerseyh0mo Davey on x

  I forgot about this stupid shit but imagine if they poured $80 billion into feeding the hungry instead of this failed cartoon universe that nobody wanted

• @boztank Boz on x

  ICYMI this from my AMA yesterday. We've decided to retain existing Horizon Worlds in VR for the foreseeable future. I know this is a bit of whiplash just a few days after we announced something different, but Horizon has some real fans in the VR community and they encouraged us