I think this is sane washing their idea in the modern context of it having failed. I think at the time, they thought VR would be the next big thing and wanted to become the dominant player via first mover advantage.

The headsets don’t really make sense to me in the way you’re describing. Phones are omnipresent because it’s a thing you always just have on you. Headsets are large enough that it’s a conscious choice to bring it; they’re closer to a laptop than a phone.

Also, the web interface is like right there staring at them. Any device with a browser can access Facebook like that. Google/Apple/Microsoft can’t mess with that much without causing a huge scene and probably massive antitrust backlash.

> I'm not convinced that it's a mistake for Meta to peruse not being beholden to other platforms.

Devoid of other context, it’s hard to disagree. But your parent comment only asserted that the metaverse specifically as proposed by Facebook was an obviously stupid idea.

>Why?

Patrick Boyle did a nice video a few weeks back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BaSBjxNg-M

Because it's been a massively expensive failure. They can't just will their own platform into existence just because it would be good to have, consumers have a say and they've rejected it completely.

Because it's been very clear for a long time that the vast majority of people do not want to play VR Second Life.

so after $80 billion spent, they must have an ecosystem of hundreds of millions of users? Right?

Maybe they should have spent that on the facebookphone