The private conversation that revealed priorities

In 2021, Zuckerberg told a concerned advisor he cared about child safety but wouldn't make it his main focus because he was more focused on building the metaverse. Weeks later, Meta renamed itself.

“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.”

Move fast, break things, move on

Meta has spent two decades at the center of the internet, but now faces lawsuits, regulatory pressure, backlash over smart glasses, and a reputation crisis. Yet it keeps pivoting to the next opportunity.

The metaverse bet that cost eighty billion

Meta's Reality Labs division has lost over eighty billion dollars. It shut down Horizon Worlds, cut ten percent of the division, and closed three VR studios after the metaverse failed to materialize.

Smart glasses are actually working

Ray-Ban Meta glasses sold roughly two million units in 2023 and 2024, then seven million more by end of 2025. Sales doubled in Q2 2026, surprising even Zuckerberg.

AI glasses are the next cognitive advantage

Zuckerberg believes people without AI-enabled glasses will face a cognitive disadvantage. Meta is aggressively rebranding smart glasses as AI glasses and planning audio-only versions without cameras.

“I think in the future, if you don't have glasses that have AI, I think you're probably going to be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage.”

Pervert glasses and privacy backlash

Pickup artists and pranksters used Ray-Ban glasses to harass women and retail workers, earning the label pervert glasses. Activists launched guerrilla campaigns painting smart glasses users as privacy threats.

Meta shipped facial recognition it didn't activate

The New York Times reported Meta intended to launch facial recognition during political unrest. Wired then reported Meta had shipped but not activated this tech to millions of glasses.

The AI hiring spree that flopped

Zuckerberg offered up to one billion dollars to lure top AI talent and even hand-delivered soup to recruit researchers. But more than a year later, Meta has little to show besides two manifestos and Muse.

It's a shitshow, employees say

Meta employees describe the AI division as chaotic, with scattered initiatives, low morale, and strategy running on vibes. The company keeps reorganizing and clashing over whether to build frontier models or revenue-focused products.

“It's a shitshow.”

Engineers don't trust Meta's AI models

Meta employees typically use Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI models instead of Meta's own AI, comparing using MetaAI to children forced to eat vegetables. Even after massive investments, Meta doesn't rank in the top three AI players internally.

Zuckerberg's manifesto didn't land

Zuckerberg's vision of superintelligence for creating and discovering new things read like PR to AI researchers and didn't articulate how AI benefits Meta's advertising business or justifies hundreds of billions in spending.

Muse is the next big bet

Meta released Muse, a personal AI agent, in early September with over six hundred thousand daily active users in the US, topping the iOS App Store. It's Zuckerberg's latest attempt to reinvent the company.

Instagram is still the cash cow

Instagram generates fifty-two billion dollars in US ad revenue annually, surpassing Facebook's forty-eight billion. It remains the prestige platform for creators and brands despite TikTok competition.

Young people are logging off

A third of social media users post less than they did last year. Gen Z and Gen Alpha want in-person experiences and avoid platforms where parents are. Entire generations are logging off or being kept off.

A reckoning could come in two to three years

If current trends continue as Gen Alpha comes of age, Meta could become a graveyard for millennials, Gen X, and boomers. Advertisers may follow users elsewhere, threatening Meta's core business.

AI content will replace human creators

Zuckerberg said Meta will soon provide a nearly infinite universe of personalized AI-generated content. Creators like Tati Bruening worry they'll have to become AI robots to keep up with algorithmic demands.

“A human artist is not going to have the same level of output as an AI machine.”

Child safety settlements add up

Meta settled with forty-seven state attorneys general in August for significant changes including age assurance, two-hour daily usage limits, and restricted notifications for teens. It also took a two point four billion dollar litigation charge in Q two.

Meta turned Trump's suspension into a settlement

Zuckerberg ditched fact-checking, disbanded the DEI team, and agreed to a twenty-five million dollar settlement over Trump's account suspension. Meta's apps benefited from TikTok's brief ban.

The hyper-local threat Meta can't control

State and local governments are pushing back on AI data centers and their energy demands. A nationwide slowdown in compute availability could slow Meta and other AI companies more than federal regulation.