Zuckerberg on why Facebook is becoming ‘a metaverse company’

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would strive to build a maximalist, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi — a world known as the metaverse. The company’s divisions focused on products for communities, creators, commerce, and virtual reality would increasingly work to realize this vision. The metaverse is having a moment; coined in Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel, the term refers to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space. Zuckerberg referred to it as an "embodied internet," operated by many players in a decentralized way. The timing of the CEO's metaverse vision for Facebook comes as a package of bills making its way through Congress could potentially force the company to spin out Instagram and WhatsApp, and limit Facebook’s ability to make future acquisitions — or offer services connected to its hardware products. Yet even if tech regulation stalls in the United States, a thriving metaverse would raise questions both familiar and strange about how the virtual space is governed, how its contents would be moderated, and what its existence would do to our shared sense of reality. Zuckerberg's conversation with The Verge outlines his vision for an embodied internet, the challenges of governing it, and gender imbalance in virtual reality today.