Meta’s Muse Gains Early Users as Safety and Metaverse Questions Linger

The Verge tied Meta’s current predicament to a private WhatsApp exchange from 2021, when a whistleblower alleged Facebook was harming children. After Zuckerberg publicly rejected those claims, saying “We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health” and that “It’s difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives,” one reader contacted him privately on WhatsApp, according to exhibits later released as part of a series of lawsuits. The person urged Zuckerberg, a parent himself, to make child safety central to his messaging, writing: “i am not saying facebook is duplicitous and evil... i am saying the opposite, you have heard the chorus and will PERSONALLY make this issue over adolescents your issue.”

Zuckerberg replied candidly, according to the exhibits. “I care deeply about this and we’ll continue focusing on being industry-leading with young people,” he wrote, “but I’m not going to say it’s my personal main focus when I have a number of other areas I’m more focused on like building the metaverse.” He later reiterated that “I personally care about this,” but asked how the child-safety issue fit with “our focus on promoting building the metaverse as the next major opportunity,” adding, “That’s not at odds with safety, but it’s a much different and more innovation-focused message.” Weeks later, Facebook changed its name to Meta.

Years after that conversation, The Verge wrote, online child safety concerns have grown while the metaverse is more often discussed as a multibillion-dollar money sink. The exchange is a microcosm of Zuckerberg’s management, the article said: always chasing the next big opportunity. Facebook’s famous motto was “Move fast and break things”; its new one, The Verge suggested, might be closer to “Move fast, break things, move on.”

Meta now faces pressure on multiple fronts, according to the article. Lawsuits have piled up as regulators turn on social media, and the company’s push into smart glasses has triggered negative press and backlash, including the pejorative label “pervert glasses.” It remains behind in the AI race, and public perception of Zuckerberg himself has worsened. But Meta is far from finished: it still has a growing, highly profitable social media business, it is dominant in AI-powered smart glasses, and it has defused potential regulatory threats, The Verge reported.

The company’s expensive metaverse bet illustrates both the scale of its ambition and the cost of moving on. At Facebook Connect, Zuckerberg announced the company would rebuild its identity around the metaverse, an immersive 3D space where digital avatars could socialize, work and collaborate, built on a virtual reality headset Meta acquired in 2014. Nearly five years later, Meta’s Reality Labs division had accumulated more than $80 billion in operating losses. This year it began by cutting roughly 10 percent of the division, shuttering three VR studios, discontinuing the metaverse for work, and announcing it would shut down Horizon Worlds on VR headsets. After public backlash, Meta decided to keep Horizon Worlds going, but The Verge said it is clear Zuckerberg’s VR gamble has not paid off.

The investment was not entirely abandoned. Meta dominates the nascent but growing smart glasses market, which The Verge called perhaps its biggest success story in recent years. The metaverse may not be the future of computing, the article said, but augmented reality ambitions have kept the company in a position to compete for what many tech leaders consider the next mobile computing platform.

Muse now gives Zuckerberg another metaverse-like project, The Verge wrote. Early numbers are promising: the Apptopia estimate cited by the publication shows more than 600,000 US daily active users and a spot at the top of the iOS App Store charts. The question, according to the article, is whether a company synonymous with safety and privacy debacles can become the AI-powered voice in everyone’s ear.

Editor’s Summary: Meta’s Muse AI agent has drawn more than 600,000 daily US users and topped iOS charts, according to an Apptopia estimate cited by The Verge, giving the company a new platform after its costly metaverse pivot. The Verge also revisits a 2021 private exchange in which Zuckerberg said child safety was not his main personal focus, while Meta now faces lawsuits, regulatory scrutiny and smart-glasses backlash. Muse’s early traction tests whether Meta can rebuild trust as it competes in AI.