The Metaverse is Mark Zuckerberg's escape hatch

If his new strategy works - a big if - it could help address several of Facebook's biggest problems

When Mark Zuckerberg appeared onscre­en at Facebook’s virtual Connect confer­ence on Thursday, he looked like a man unburdened.

Whistle-blower? What whistle-blo­wer? Instead, Zuckerberg and his lieut­ena­nts cheerfully laid out their vision for the so-called metaverse, the immersive virtu­al environment that Facebook — which, as of Thursday, has been renamed Meta. The company already has over 10,000 people working on augmented and virtual reality projects — roughly twice as many people as are on Twitter’s entire staff — and has said it plans to hire 10,000 more in Europe soon. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual