The Metaverse is Zuckerberg’s escape hatch

When Mark Zuckerberg appeared on screen at Facebook’s virtual Connect conference Thursday, smiling as he wandered through sterile rooms filled with midcentury modern furniture, he looked like a man unburdened.

Whistleblower? What whistleblower? Cascading, yearslong trust crisis that has regulators fuming, employees bailing and lawmakers comparing Facebook to Big Tobacco? Hmm, doesn’t ring a bell.

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, although everyone except for a few professionally obligated financial journalists will probably keep calling it Facebook — is trying to build.