Look, I'm not the biggest Mark Zuckerberg fan or anything, but I don't think the thus-far questionable business decision to pivot to the metaverse is quite the same level as having an very public mental breakdown and making anti-semitic remarks
I don't mean Kanye's public antics and statements. I meant his questionable design/musical/performance choices.
Mark has lost over $30B on Metaverse supported by a stagnating ad business. Apple just launched an AR product that seems quite a bit better than the Meta options. John Carmack publicly complained about the reasons he left work at Meta which demonstrate a lack of vision at the leadership levels. It's unclear how the Metaverse will play out at this point but it feels like a solution looking from a problem rather than something people really want.
Digital consumerism is a potential lifeline, as digital products are close to cost free to produce compared to real luxury goods or travel, allowing much higher numbers of people to own them. As people generally become poorer and real consumption grows out of reach, the metaverse potentially serves as a second level of prosperity and success for the have nots in the real world.
Some early examples of this are Second Life, valuation of digital items like skins in games and travel and dining POV YouTubers. I think most would prefer the real deal, but if it's unavailable a fake version can be made good enough.
[1]https://cup.columbia.edu/book/an-all-consuming-century/97802...
Also Carmack is a great programmer, but there’s no reason to think he knows a thing about the market and business strategy.
Sure there’s the whole metaverse thing, but even without that, people are getting value out of the Quest right now, playing Beat Saber etc.
> How much money do you think Apple spent on their VR product vs Meta? Sure Apple’s is better, but it also costs SEVEN times more. Do you really think Apple’s will sell more units any time soon? Meta has already sold tens of millions of quests.
Oculus Quest has sold almost 20M units over 4 years of existence across all products in the line. The original iPhone was priced at a point at that point considered absurd. Note that oculus started off with the rift at $600 but requiring a multi-thousand dollar computer. I'm not an Apple fanboy/apologist but this is a straw man argument.
> Also Carmack is a great programmer, but there’s no reason to think he knows a thing about the market and business strategy.
This is disingenuous. John Carmack founded id which produced modern 3d and FPS as we know it today. He's not just a great programmer but he was a successful businessman before Facebook existed. One, he understands the market and business strategy at least as well as Mark given he spends more time on the matter as his primary focus. Two, his complaints were not about market and business strategy but about inefficiencies in development processes that no one in the company besides C-levels are empowered to resolve.
> Sure there’s the whole metaverse thing, but even without that, people are getting value out of the Quest right now, playing Beat Saber etc.
Let's be clear here: even if each quest was $500 and had zero CoGS that would be $10B revenue spread over 4 years when Mark spent >$30B in less than that. I'll eat a humble pie if he makes this make sense but it was not a sound decision given the way he structured the approach.
We must live in different worlds. They invested $30B in research, have a clear advantage now that Apple is trying to enter the market, and is still printing money like there's no tomorrow via their ad business.
Bobby Fischer is just one example of a bright mind corrupted by ideology. There are countless.
Concerns about lack of global moderation and enforcement were well known before the massacre. Mark and leadership made a choice akin to what the major oil producers did regarding global warming: kick the can until it's a problem.