{"id":545575,"date":"2026-03-26T03:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/545575\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T03:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:02:22","slug":"the-people-left-behind-by-the-metaverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/545575\/","title":{"rendered":"The People Left Behind by the Metaverse"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Meta announced its plan<\/a> to shut down Horizon Worlds last week a lot of us laughed<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Social scientist Dr Ruth Diaz was not one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Diaz worked for Meta as a VR community design developer in the early days of the Horizon Worlds project and left in 2022. After Meta\u2019s announcement last week, Diaz wrote a post on LinkedIn attempting to articulate her feelings<\/a>. \u201cI cannot overstate the scale of institutional betrayal this represents,\u201d she said in her post<\/a>. \u201cMark Zuckerberg renamed his company Meta to claim transformation. What he has actually done is strip-mine the trust and labor of every creator who took that promise seriously. That should sit on his record permanently. I feel horror. Rage. Grief. Shame. The specific shame of having believed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diaz said she fell in love with VR after her brother lent her a PC virtual reality setup and she collaborated on art with people spontaneously in a virtual world. \u201cVR puts us into a very disinhibited state where we can open our hearts and try on new identities,\u201d she told 404 Media. \u201cIt’s an equalizer of identities, some because of the anonymity, but some because we all choose our own skin. That creates an even footing of sorts.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she signed on with Meta after being impressed by an early version of their Horizon Worlds toolkit. After joining the company, she spent some of her time getting employees into headsets and showing them around the virtual worlds people had made. \u201cAnd many times, I had them in tears by the end because they finally understood what was possible,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I don’t think any other social app has ever built a tool that had that combination of simplicity and hands on learning how to create.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a follow up post on LinkedIn<\/a>, Diaz shared some of these worlds including the interactive biography of an amputee named Lacey and an Underground Railroad experience from a woman named Bizerka. She pointed out that Alcoholics Anonymous holds meetings<\/a> in Horizon Worlds and shared a church that meets on Meta\u2019s platform<\/a> every Sunday.<\/p>\n

Diaz\u2019s fears were allayed somewhat on March 18 when Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth backpedaled on shutting Horizon Worlds down completely. During an AMA<\/a> posted to Instagram, he told fans that the company would keep Horizon Worlds accessible for \u201cthe foreseeable future.\u201d But Meta is capricious and it\u2019s impossible to know exactly how far into the future its imagining.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a ton of faith it\u2019ll work, but I think it could, because it\u2019s very unusual for them to flinch,\u201d Diaz told 404 Media. \u201cThey usually just kind of hunker down and pretend they don\u2019t see it and go full PR.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that Bosworth\u2019s promise to keep Horizon Worlds running wasn\u2019t a big enough promise.\u00a0 \u201cThe way they have behaved here is profoundly harmful and I would deem it a type of psychological torture from corporate neglect,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the horror of this is ongoing, because [Bosworth] came out and said: \u2018we\u2019re going to keep it for now,\u2019 that doesn\u2019t reassure anybody, that doesn\u2019t help anybody. That makes people feel foolish for being upset but also completely uncertain about their futures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wagner James Au, author of Making a Metaverse That Matters and the blog New World Notes<\/a>, told 404 Media that he\u2019s sympathetic. He also noted that building the type of community she did without the support and infrastructure of a company like Meta is difficult. \u201cA common mistake is to assume the Metaverse should be a non-corporate open source project. Those have been tried and they’ve all failed to gain traction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the end, the social connections Diaz fostered will remain even as the spaces fade. \u201cMetaverse communities are what’s important and permanent, not any particular 3D space they’re associated with,\u201d James Au said. \u201cUser communities create, congregate, and socialize around 3D spaces, but those spaces age over time and lose their luster. What’s important is that they helped foster social connections which can be resilient beyond any one platform. It’s why so much metaverse activity happens outside the immersive space on Bluesky, Reddit, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Diaz, James Au doesn\u2019t trust the Zuckerberg. \u201cMeta has consistently failed in its responsibilities to users, so I’m not sure it’s realistic for Horizon Worlds users to expect anything from it now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s Metaverse was doomed from the start but that doesn\u2019t mean the idea itself is bad or even Meta\u2019s underlying technology. Diaz and others found community there. \u201cDespite the ups and downs and branding and \u2018Metaverse is dead\u2019 and whatever, all these twists and turns, the tools [themselves] have incredible merit. And that\u2019s the only message I\u2019ve ever tried to bring, and I\u2019m just heartbroken that it got attached to these companies,\u201d Diaz said.<\/p>\n

About the author<\/p>\n

Matthew Gault is a writer covering weird tech, nuclear war, and video games. He\u2019s worked for Reuters, Motherboard, and the New York Times.<\/p>\n

\"Matthew <\/p>\n