I would argue it's probably almost the only thing they're working on that has any real value too. Most of their other products don't, or even have negative value, in terms of their usefulness to society and humanity.
Metaverse has negative value too, but at least it has novelty...
There's useful applications for AR and VR. I don't know that Meta would actually pursue those instead of harmful applications, but at least it's easy to imagine the positive potential for these technologies.