Zuckerberg's Metaverse Gets Quiet Rollout in Facebook-Wary D.C.
Meta’s team is laying out its vision for this imaginary world in calls with conservative think tanks, nonprofits
Meta Platforms signage outside the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
Photographer: Nick Otto/BloombergMark Zuckerberg has a problem money can’t fix: convincing Capitol Hill that the metaverse — whatever that is — isn’t evil.
His strategy is to start with a soft campaign to woo Washington insiders before deeply skeptical lawmakers begin to debate the controversial company's next act. This is a change of gears for a Silicon Valley behemoth whose early motto was to “move fast and break things” and that outspent all its peers to fend off legislation to curb the dominance of Big Tech.
A whistle-blower blasted the company and its founder at an October Senate hearing, decrying Zuckerberg’s outsized influence and calling for more regulation to stop the network giant putting profit above the public good. On the heels of that controversy, Facebook was rechristened Meta Platforms Inc., and its Washington team is already working to lay a favorable foundation for the push into this potentially lucrative landscape before lawmakers and regulators drill into what kind of harm it could cause.
Meta’s product and policy teams are introducing this future virtual world to think tanks and nonprofits, according to people familiar with the discussions, holding conference calls in recent months to lay out the company’s vision.