In 2021, as a whistleblower emerged with dramatic allegations that Facebook was harming children, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a rebuttal on Facebook<\/a>. \u201cWe care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. It\u2019s difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives,\u201d he wrote in a note to Meta staff, which he reposted publicly. \u201cAt the most basic level, I think most of us just don\u2019t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Away from the stream of often inane public replies, one reader didn\u2019t like what they saw. Zuckerberg spoke with the unidentified person privately on WhatsApp<\/a>, according to exhibits later released<\/a> as part of a series of lawsuits, and the figure urged Zuckerberg \u2014 a parent himself \u2014 to make child safety even more central in his messaging. \u201ci am not saying facebook is duplicitous and evil,\u201d they wrote. \u201ci am saying the opposite, you have heard the chorus and will PERSONALLY make this issue over adolescents your issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the privacy of the conversation, Zuckerberg was candid. \u201cI care deeply about this and we\u2019ll continue focusing on being industry-leading with young people,\u201d he responded, \u201cbut I\u2019m not going to say it\u2019s my personal main focus when I have a number of other areas I\u2019m more focused on like building the metaverse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg later reiterated that \u201cI personally care about this.\u201d But he appeared ambivalent, nudging his conversation partner away from older concerns and toward his vision for the future. \u201cHow do you think this fits with our focus on promoting building the metaverse as the next major opportunity?\u201d he asked. \u201cThat\u2019s not at odds with safety, but it\u2019s a much different and more innovation-focused message.\u201d Weeks later, Zuckerberg made a huge announcement: The company was changing its name to Meta in honor of its newest, most important priority.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Years after that conversation, online child safety concerns have ballooned \u2014 while if anybody\u2019s talking about the Metaverse, it\u2019s likely as a multibillion-dollar money sink where nobody has legs<\/a>. But the exchange is a microcosm of how Zuckerberg has run Meta, a sprawling online empire worth well over a trillion dollars: by always chasing the next big opportunity. Facebook\u2019s motto was once, famously, \u201cMove fast and break things.<\/em>\u201d Its new one might be closer to Move fast, break things, move on.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For two decades, Meta\u2019s products have been at the center of what people do online. But Meta now finds itself besieged on all sides. Lawsuits have piled up<\/a> as regulators turn on social media. A push into smart glasses has triggered a mountain<\/a> of negative press and backlash \u2014 including the pejorative moniker<\/a> \u201cpervert glasses.\u201d The company remains firmly behind in the AI race. Public perception<\/a> of Zuckerberg himself has curdled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yet Meta is far from finished. It maintains a growing, highly profitable social media business. It\u2019s dominant in AI-powered smart glasses, what many tech leaders consider the next mobile computing platform. It\u2019s defused potential regulatory threats. And its latest platform, a \u201cpersonal AI agent\u201d dubbed Muse, was released in early September<\/a>, giving Zuckerberg his next metaverse-like project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Muse is Zuckerberg\u2019s latest bid to reinvent the company. Early numbers for Muse are promising; an Apptopia estimate<\/a> this week indicates it\u2019s got over 600,000 daily active users in the US, shooting it to the top of the iOS App Store charts. Yet the question remains: Can a company synonymous with safety and privacy debacles become the AI-powered voice in everyone\u2019s ear?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Zuckerberg took the stage at Facebook Connect to announce that one of the most recognizable names in tech was getting a new identity, he was planting a flag. Facebook, the social media company known for its \u201cbig blue app\u201d? That was the past. The future of the internet was the metaverse, an immersive 3D space where digital avatars could socialize, work, and collaborate, built on a virtual reality headset the company acquired in 2014<\/a>. And after the covid pandemic\u2019s mass shutdowns of physical space, Facebook believed in the metaverse so much that it would rebuild its entire identity around the niche world of virtual and augmented reality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nearly five years later, Meta\u2019s Reality Labs division has accumulated over $80 billion in operating losses<\/a>. It kicked off this year by cutting roughly 10 percent of that division<\/a>, shuttering three VR studios<\/a>, discontinuing the metaverse for work<\/a>, and announcing it\u2019d be shutting down Horizon Worlds<\/a>, its flagship metaverse experience, on VR headsets. Meta has since decided to keep Horizon Worlds going after public backlash, but it\u2019s clear that Zuckerberg\u2019s colossal gamble on VR hasn\u2019t paid off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But to call Meta\u2019s investment an abandoned boondoggle isn\u2019t quite accurate either. Meta dominates the nascent but growing smart glasses market, perhaps its biggest success story in recent years. The metaverse may not be the future of computing, but its augmented reality ambitions could still pay off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Few expected the Ray-Ban Meta glasses to take off when they launched in 2023. After all, Meta\u2019s first attempt, the Ray-Ban Stories in 2021, was a bona fide flop. Ninety percent of owners left the glasses to rot<\/a> in their drawers. But improvements to cameras in the next-generation hardware helped Meta to sell roughly 2 million units \u2014 surprising even Zuckerberg. By the end of 2025, EssilorLuxottica \u2014 Meta\u2019s partner in building these devices \u2014 had sold an additional 7 million units<\/a>. All told, Meta and EssilorLuxottica reported that smart glasses sales doubled in Q2 of 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Few expected the Ray-Ban Meta glasses to take off \u2014 but their success has surprised even Zuckerberg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Most importantly, Zuckerberg and Meta leadership view this tech as the perfect vehicle for the company\u2019s latest, shiniest interest: its AI investments<\/a>. So much so that Meta is aggressively trying to brand these as AI glasses<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think in the future, if you don\u2019t have glasses that have AI \u2014 or some way to interact with AI \u2014 I think you\u2019re probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people and who you\u2019re working with or competing against,\u201d Zuckerberg said in a 2025 earnings call<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta is still funneling billions into the AR space without profit, but that\u2019s not necessarily disastrous. \u201cThere\u2019s no true way to tell if [Meta] is successful or not. You could measure market share, and they absolutely have that, but that still doesn\u2019t speak to profitability or if the spending to date is justified,\u201d says Jitesh Ubrani, research director at IDC, noting that the runway for XR \u2014 the umbrella term for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality \u2014 is a notoriously long one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n VR and the metaverse also had long runways that never paid off. But right now, the smart glasses market is building momentum, making it far too early to say whether it\u2019s doomed to the same fate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Looking at what numbers do exist, Meta is the undisputed king. According to IDC, Meta commands 69.2 percent of the smart glasses and headset market as of Q2 2026. That number jumps up to 76 percent of AI glasses without displays. That said, Ubrani argues that it\u2019s unlikely that any company will see a return on investment in the next five years. It\u2019s possible, he says, that could take as long as 25 years. Absent profit, the next best measure of success is often determined by who can afford to stay in the game long enough \u2014 while ignoring demanding investors \u2014 to influence the next chapter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn the XR market, I\u2019d say that [Meta] is the leader in every segment they play in,\u201d says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. That can be a double-edged sword, though. \u201cThey\u2019ve both been a steward of the XR and AR space, but they\u2019ve also limited its potential because they control the platform, the spending, and they decided who were the winners and the losers by investing with their dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Both Sag and Ubrani also agree that Meta wouldn\u2019t currently be the leader in smart glasses or a major player in AI if not for its early, if flawed, investments in VR.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta\u2019s success on this front has kicked off a race among tech companies. Google is pushing its Android XR platform, working with Samsung to launch several \u201cintelligent eyewear\u201d products later this year. Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> has reported that Apple is also working on a pair. Outside the major players, there are dozens of Ray-Ban dupes from smaller companies. Again, Ubrani says it\u2019s difficult to put hard numbers on how much tech companies are pouring into this space \u2014 but whatever the cost, the prize is winning what Silicon Valley sees as the next big mobile computing platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ubrani points to the smart glasses supply chain, where \u201cone<\/em> player who\u2019s willing to invest no matter where the market is going\u201d has massively changed the game. He contrasts that approach with Google, which retreated after criticism of its own glasses over a decade ago. \u201cWhen people didn\u2019t like [Google Glass], they scaled back significantly, and that in a sense, hurt the entire industry. Now with Meta, we\u2019re seeing that even if Meta\u2019s not making money, the industry is still moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEven if Meta\u2019s not making money, the industry is still moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On paper, it might seem Meta\u2019s already won the battle for the next mobile computing platform. At least, if Meta weren\u2019t Meta. While the company gained serious momentum in 2024 and 2025, it\u2019s attracted a public backlash largely of its own making. Meta pushed its glasses as a way to make content for Instagram and other platforms, but failed to account for how bad actors might misuse its products. Online pickup artists and pranksters have started using the devices to harass women<\/a> and retail workers<\/a>, resulting in the \u201cpervert glasses\u201d label. The resulting videos are pushed to social media, where they effectively publicize the tech\u2019s most troubling aspects. All this stokes roughly a decade\u2019s worth of privacy concerns stemming from indiscriminate data collection, breaches, and advertising practices. It\u2019s not just that Meta perhaps underestimated how its products could be misused. It already built a reputation for not taking privacy seriously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In recent months, activists have launched guerrilla campaigns in major cities by \u201cremixing\u201d Meta\u2019s own marketing, painting smart glasses users as privacy threats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta has tried to demonstrate that it cares about privacy. \u201cIf people aren\u2019t comfortable with you wearing the glasses, not only do we personally think that\u2019s bad, but we wouldn\u2019t have a business anymore,\u201d Alex Himel, Meta\u2019s VP of wearables, recently told The Verge<\/em><\/a> ahead of a mandatory update<\/a> that makes it harder to disable the LED light that alerts people that the headset is recording. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has also recently said Meta will take down prank videos<\/a> captured with the Ray-Ban glasses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But these have been largely reactive policies. For the public, they look more like attempts to distract from unflattering news that feeds into Meta\u2019s notorious privacy reputation. The New York Times<\/em><\/a> reported that Meta intended to launch facial recognition software during political unrest to throw off privacy advocates. That was soon followed by a Wired<\/em> report that said Meta had shipped<\/a> \u2014 but not activated \u2014 this facial recognition tech to millions of glasses. Rounding out the trifecta was a Financial Times<\/em> report<\/a> that Meta is working on \u201csuper sensing glasses\u201d that will be able to see what you\u2019re doing 24\/7. Andrew Nazdin, director of Glasgow Actions Team, one of the groups behind the guerrilla campaigns, says it would be \u201cfoolish for us to let them police themselves instead of calling on society to reject this [tech].\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s too soon to say if this backlash has hurt Meta\u2019s smart glasses ambitions. Ubrani says we likely won\u2019t see any impact on sales \u2014 if there is one \u2014 until the holiday season. Even so, analysts aren\u2019t convinced Meta\u2019s bad reputation is enough to derail its hopes for smart glasses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMeta\u2019s done a very poor job of talking about privacy and setting the right tone,\u201d acknowledges Sag. \u201cBut it\u2019s funny because if you go [politically] far left or far right, people care more about privacy. In the middle, people care less and just want to have a good experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf you go [politically] far left or far right, people care more about privacy. In the middle, people care less and just want to have a good experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As for public distrust of Zuckerberg, Sag says his thorny reputation may not sit well with the public, but it\u2019s considered part of Meta\u2019s strength in a niche space like XR.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMeta would not be where it is today if it weren\u2019t for Mark Zuckerberg \u2026 Even if people disagree with him, ultimately what he wants is what gets done,\u201d Sag says. \u201cI think his fear of losing the AI race is what sparked the whole Superintelligence Lab, and now they\u2019re back in the competition. He has blind spots, but he\u2019s able to correct much more quickly than any other CEO founder \u2026 every time people have counted him out or questioned his leadership, he\u2019s been able to claw the company back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That unilateral doggedness is why Meta seems hell-bent on barreling forward with AI glasses, privacy qualms be damned. A few months ago, it released Meta Glasses<\/a>, a newer and cheaper version of the Ray-Ban glasses sans Ray-Ban branding. At a launch event, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told the press that Meta was contemplating audio-only glasses without cameras. It will likely launch even more new styles, collaborations, and potentially new hardware and privacy protections at Meta Connect 2026 this week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMeta missed mobile, they missed VR when it first came out. The metaverse didn\u2019t pan out the way they thought it would. That\u2019s one of the reasons why we\u2019re seeing them so determined and willing to spend to make AI glasses happen,\u201d says Ubrani.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Meta can maintain its lead in the XR space. AI wearables are only just beginning to heat up, with players big and small eager to throw their hat in the ring across multiple form factors ranging from pendants to smartwatches. Meta only has glasses \u2014 and it\u2019s tying the glasses\u2019 success to the overall success of the company\u2019s AI bets. And on that side of the business, things are looking like a hot mess.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Last summer, Zuckerberg attempted to lure top AI talent to supercharge his company\u2019s lagging AI division. He offered a series of staggering pay packages, running up to $1 billion<\/a>, to join Meta\u2019s Superintelligence Labs. But more than a year later, the company doesn\u2019t have much to show for it besides two<\/a> manifestos<\/a> published by Zuckerberg and the recently released Muse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg may have inspired confidence among investors and analysts, but sources at or close to the company told The Verge<\/em> that morale is down, AI initiatives are scattered at best, and the company\u2019s AI strategy is running largely on vibes alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a shitshow,\u201d says one longtime Meta employee, who works on Reality Labs and requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta dipped its toes into AI around its metaverse restructuring and released a small group of models. But focused on Zuck\u2019s VR ambitions, it missed its competitors investing in upstarts<\/a> that would soon become AI giants. Its first frontier models were released in 2023 to lukewarm reception, and it wasn\u2019t until the tepid response to Llama 4 in 2025 that the company jumped into the AI race with both feet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s when Zuckerberg kicked off his AI hiring strategy in earnest, even hand-delivering soup to researchers and engineers he wanted to recruit from rivals and other industry heavyweights. In June 2025, Meta invested $14.3 billion<\/a> in data-labeling company Scale AI and poached its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead Meta\u2019s AI efforts. But many AI engineers<\/a> turned down Zuckerberg\u2019s advances. Meta AI underwent wave after wave of reorganizations, and its superintelligence sub-team, TBD Lab, has reportedly clashed with Meta executives<\/a> over opposing goals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n TBD Lab has reportedly sought to think longer-term and build best-in-class models to secure the company\u2019s place among its competitors. But executives have reportedly remained focused on more platform-specific ways to drive revenue, like companion chatbots and social media features. Some attempts to integrate AI into platforms like Instagram have drawn backlash \u2014 it briefly launched and then suspended<\/a> a controversial Instagram deepfakes generator, and said it \u201cmissed the mark\u201d on an AI tool that provided creepily detailed information<\/a> about a user\u2019s children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEvery time a new technology comes that could potentially augment the company\u2019s revenue stream beyond ads, the company kind of goes manic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Meta\u2019s most prestigious AI team is a \u201ctotal mess,\u201d according to Wired <\/em>reports that describe<\/a> internal chaos and ever-changing strategy. Zuckerberg reportedly admitted to employees during an internal town hall<\/a> this summer that progress on AI agents was slower than expected. On a recent Meta earnings call, an analyst told executives he had been fielding questions from investors about Meta\u2019s amount of debt compared to capital, as the company ramped up its spending to try to get ahead in the AI race. Zuckerberg has also been criticized for slashing team sizes<\/a> to reportedly replace a significant number of employees with AI systems, per Reuters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The current employee says Meta has a bad habit of jumping from hype cycle to hype cycle: \u201cEvery time a new technology comes that could potentially augment the company\u2019s revenue stream beyond ads, the company kind of goes manic in order to invest and to change and to grow, to incorporate this new technology. It happened with crypto. It happened with VR and the metaverse. It\u2019s happening now with AI. I think it stems from a lack of maturity of our founder [and] a lack of maturity of our leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A former Meta employee, who also requested anonymity, echoes those thoughts: \u201cLike most big tech, there\u2019s just been such a big push to AI-ify everything … but it\u2019s basically a laughingstock internally.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a May podcast interview<\/a>, Wang denied that he and Zuckerberg had been fighting a lot, saying leaders at the company know frontier model development and product integration are both important. But, he added, \u201clike any company \u2026 we debate the points deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the current employee says Meta\u2019s AI strategy simply isn\u2019t based in the reality of the business or what its customers actually want. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole different planet between what the C-suite is talking about and what\u2019s happening on the ground,\u201d they say, later adding, \u201cThat tension is literally at the core of the problem at Meta \u2026 building AI for the sake of having the biggest building or the biggest fucking dildo versus building a useful product.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta has spent an extraordinary amount on AI, but it\u2019s made few waves in the industry<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg\u2019s latest manifesto<\/a> \u2014 in which he lays out his vision of superintelligence that people use \u201cto create and discover extraordinary new things, build new businesses, express new ideas, learn new concepts, and advance our health and quality of life\u201d \u2014 didn\u2019t make many waves in the broader AI industry. And so far, the features Meta has added to smart glasses and the products it\u2019s rolled out haven\u2019t broken through compared to the company\u2019s biggest rivals. Given the early usage statistics, Muse could break this pattern \u2014 but it\u2019s too early to know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Noah Smith, senior director of NLP research at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2), says the manifesto \u201creads to me a bit like PR \u2026 I also didn\u2019t find anything particularly surprising there, or new.\u201d Instead, Smith found himself asking what is going on behind the scenes to make Zuckerberg publicly state all this now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg\u2019s manifesto also wasn\u2019t received well internally, according to the current and former Meta employees The Verge<\/em> spoke with. In particular, the current employee says it\u2019s a typical example of putting the cart before the horse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe manifesto did not articulate the biggest question,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat will AI do for our business as an advertising business? What is the benefit in terms of return on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars that we\u2019re spending? We don\u2019t even have a product play.\u201d He adds that even after Meta\u2019s massive investments, he wouldn\u2019t rank his own company in the top three of AI players \u2014 and that that\u2019s reflected by the fact that engineers at the company don\u2019t typically prioritize using Meta\u2019s own AI models, instead using models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Chinese AI companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He says that after Meta announces a new AI model internally, people will try it out for a little bit and then typically go back to using Anthropic\u2019s Claude models; he compares employees using MetaAI to children goaded into eating their vegetables.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think if we actually cared about developing AI well, we would have everyone just use [our] AI and constantly give feedback,\u201d he says. \u201cThat would be monumental. But likely we would take a productivity hit in other ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Overall, \u201cmorale is in the gutter,\u201d the current employee says. \u201cPeople do not trust leadership. I get a strong sense that leadership<\/em> doesn\u2019t even trust Mark<\/em> in his direction.\u201d They add that employees feel the company is spying on them and forcing AI into everything, and amid restructuring and layoffs, workers are \u201ctired of the pizza parties\u201d and haven\u2019t seen any movement on top internal complaints, like problematic incentive structures, misuse of tokens, and pace of work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The former employee says that colleagues at the company feel that it\u2019s \u201clike the Metaverse 2.0,\u201d and though Zuckerberg bought some of the best AI talent in the world, \u201cstill, they don\u2019t have a thing that anybody wants.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A lot of people at Meta, the employee says, think it\u2019s an inevitability that the company will drop its AI efforts the same way it sidelined its metaverse ones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta is betting on giving users free, easily packaged access to agentic AI, but its position in the industry is tenuous<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be framed [as him] abandoning anything,\u201d the current employee says. \u201cThey were going to turn off Horizon Worlds, and Zuck got wind of it and he said they need to keep it on even though it\u2019s a money-suck \u2026 Zuckerberg does not want to admit defeat. But there will be a strategic pivot \u2026 away from this manic AI spending to whatever is next, maybe a derivative of AI, maybe more wearable stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Muse is the next step in Zuckerberg\u2019s plans: a move from straightforward language and image models toward more practically useful agentic AI. It\u2019s betting on giving users free, easily packaged access to the kinds of tools that might previously have required dedicated hosting machines or cost hundreds of dollars a year. But it\u2019s too early to tell if users will trust Meta with the keys to their digital lives. Meanwhile, Meta\u2019s position in the industry\u2019s top tier appears as tenuous as ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In response to questions from The Verge<\/em>, Meta spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said that \u201cat Meta, our philosophy is simple: let our teams deliver. We encourage you to check out Connect to learn more.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta is still trying to convince investors \u2014 and the tech industry more broadly \u2014 that its relatively nascent AI business has legs. In the meantime, the company is fighting to retain control of its true money machines and the original business proposition: pumping users\u2019 social media feeds, particularly on its flagship Instagram, with whatever keeps them engaged.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Four years ago, Instagram teased what would become perhaps its most reviled change to date: an \u201cimmersive\u201d experience where photos and videos took up a user\u2019s full screen and filled it with content from accounts a user didn\u2019t follow. The feature was blatantly ripped from TikTok, its newer, more ruthless competitor, and to many users, the update represented a betrayal of Instagram\u2019s core social elements.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Tati Bruening saw something worth saving in Instagram\u2019s earlier, actually social, peer-to-peer communication platform. The photographer and creative tapped into widespread resentment and frustration, posting a graphic that was simple and to the point: \u201cMAKE INSTAGRAM INSTAGRAM AGAIN,\u201d it read. \u201cStop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends. Sincerely, everyone.\u201d Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, titans of attention-based online economy, reposted Bruening\u2019s graphic<\/a>. An online petition racked up hundreds of thousands of signatures. Eventually, the heat became too much to bear, and Instagram rolled back the changes<\/a>. But it was only kicking the can down the road; this was the beginning of the end of an era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Several years on, watching vertical videos of strangers is a cornerstone of social media, including Instagram. And Bruening has a new perspective, having seen platforms rise and fall and upend her job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis is going to be the most shocking thing to hear coming out of my mouth, but I think in terms of all of the creator platforms, [Instagram] is going to be the one that makes it out of this era,\u201d Bruening says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think in terms of all of the creator platforms, Meta is going to be the one that makes it out of this era.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Meta (as Facebook) acquired Instagram in 2012 for approximately $1 billion, and it eclipsed the company\u2019s then-eponymous blue app in relevance years ago. Central to the creator industry, celebrity culture, and lifestyle content, Instagram is a cash cow for Meta: eMarketer estimates it will pull in $52 billion in US ad revenue this year, compared to Facebook\u2019s $48 billion. For the last few years, it\u2019s been playing catch-up not only to TikTok but to a whole internet where people spend less time connecting with friends and relatives and more on an algorithmically sorted recommendation feed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yet along with its rival YouTube, Bruening says, Instagram remains one of the few social media platforms that\u2019s been somewhat stable. Snapchat no longer serves creators, and TikTok is too filled with slop and TikTok Shop content. Meta may have turned its photo app into a vertical video slot machine, but at least it rewards the creators who obey \u2014 if you make shortform videos, Instagram will show them to someone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Creators and brands still see Instagram as the prestige, more polished platform where most advertising spend goes, says Lia Haberman, an influencer marketing expert who writes ICYMI, <\/em>a social media newsletter. Whatever lead TikTok had in shortform content a few years ago has narrowed or even closed. The threat of TikTok disappearing from the US<\/a> made advertisers nervous, Haberman says; creators started to think about backup plans and diversifying their platforms and online presence. When brands ask creators for deliverables \u2014 the assets and content that they want an influencer to post \u2014 Instagram Reels and Stories are typically first on the list, in Haberman\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Instagram is Meta\u2019s cultural crown jewel, but the company is trying to diversify its revenue through other apps, too. Meta has tried to pull more creators onto Facebook with cash incentives<\/a>. The company\u2019s massive messaging platform WhatsApp remains popular, especially outside the US; executives said subscriptions and paid messaging drove record non-advertising revenue. Threads, the X competitor, reached 500 million monthly users<\/a> this summer, but it still feels a bit like the black sheep \u2014 in earnings reports, Meta\u2019s \u201cfamily of apps\u201d is defined as \u201cFacebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other services.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company has introduced a slew of other apps, like standalone platforms for Facebook groups<\/a> and Marketplace<\/a>, with leadership saying AI is speeding up development<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSocial media is saturated in many ways. The hyper growth days for Meta are over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But despite Zuckerberg\u2019s soliloquies on an AI-powered future<\/a>, Meta is at its core in the business of serving ads, and that business is still booming: The company reported in July that its revenue from advertising grew<\/a> 27 percent year over year. Some projections show Meta\u2019s ads business surpassing Google\u2019s by the end of 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The bigger problem is the people it shows those ads to, and the content it puts those ads in between. The average social media user is less interested than they once were in posting, and Meta\u2019s access to a new generation of users is under threat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere is sort of a tension brewing where we\u2019re seeing this double-digit growth in their ad spend, but we are not seeing double-digit growth when it comes to overall usage [in the US],\u201d Minda Smiley, senior analyst at eMarketer, says of advertisers\u2019 spending patterns. \u201cI think that just really speaks to the fact that social media is saturated in many ways. The hyper growth days for Meta are over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n People in general are now using social media to consume content rather than share it; a Morning Consult poll found<\/a> that a third of respondents say they post less on social media compared to last year. What\u2019s more, entire generations of young people are logging off or forcibly being logged off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The past few years have seen bipartisan<\/a>, multinational<\/a>, and cross-generational<\/a> support for either limiting minors\u2019 access to social media or banning them altogether. When kids can get online, Gen Z and Gen Alpha don\u2019t want to express themselves fully on the social media sites their parents or relatives are on, and what\u2019s more, they want in-person experiences, Haberman says. They want to touch grass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Katie Harbath, a former Meta public policy director who now runs tech policy consultancy Anchor Change, says that there\u2019s a small point of relief for Meta here, though: Kids aren\u2019t how they\u2019re making their money. Data compiled by research platform BusinessStats<\/a> primarily from Facebook\u2019s Ads Manager found that about 3.2 percent of Facebook\u2019s global audience was between the ages of 13 and 17. On Instagram, using a similar dataset, that share was slightly higher, but still just 5.8 percent of the app\u2019s global audience, according to BusinessStats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf all of a sudden they can\u2019t have kids under 18 on, it\u2019s not great, but it\u2019s also not the vast majority of the people that are on the platform,\u201d Harbath says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But Meta will eventually need those users \u2014 it can\u2019t dine off the social media habits of older generations forever. What happens to Meta if its user base peters out, and advertisers follow? A reckoning could be coming in two to three years, Haberman says, if these trends continue as Gen Alpha comes of age.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Teen users are a tiny part of Meta\u2019s business \u2014 but losing the next generation is something it can\u2019t afford<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure that we\u2019ve really fully grasped yet how much of a big deal that this could be once audiences stop showing up or audiences age out,\u201d Haberman says. \u201cEssentially, it\u2019s going to become kind of a graveyard for millennials, Gen X, and boomers.\u201d The implications are manifold \u2014 for the social platforms themselves, naturally, but also for the advertisers, brands, and influencers who\u2019ve taken for granted that social media is an effective way to reach people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The elephant in the room is AI \u2014 Meta\u2019s costly buildouts and investments<\/a>, of course, but also the question of how to handle AI content on the platform, and how much of it users actually want. On its second quarter earnings call<\/a>, Zuckerberg said the company would soon be able to provide a \u201cnearly infinite universe of personalized content\u201d to users through its image and video generation tools, to supplement content from influencers, creators, and users\u2019 friends and family. AI content is cheap, fast, and replaceable, made to be chewed up and spit out as long as the algorithms will allow it to be served up. This is what creatives like Bruening are competing against.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou would have to become an AI robot in order to keep up with a lot of the metrics and standards for what [Meta\u2019s] best practices are,\u201d Bruening says. \u201cA human artist is not going to have the same level of output as an AI machine that\u2019s going to appease the algorithm.\u201d How far can Meta push the human creators before they decide they no longer want to compete with their automated counterparts?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Much like Meta, creators are constantly chasing the next big thing, trying to weather shifting societal expectations and tastes. For individual creators, a failure to adapt can be career-ending; Meta now finds itself in similar precarious footing. But concerns about how people use social media aren\u2019t just a matter of business. They\u2019re the object of serious inquiry for lawmakers across the world \u2014 all bent on reining in what they see as one of the tech industry\u2019s most dangerous players.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Over the past decade, Meta has become one of the biggest punching bags in politics \u2014 and its CEO the face of a callous, out-of-touch, and exploitative \u201cBig Tech.\u201d Zuckerberg, Mosseri, and other executives have been dragged before congressional committees and juries and berated for a perceived carelessness toward kids\u2019 safety and disinformation, a ruthless crushing of competition, and even complicity in lynching<\/a> and genocide<\/a>. But through each PR crisis, Meta has somehow still found its footing, and in many cases, dodged the worst-case outcomes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta grew to massive scale and influence in part through two key acquisitions: its purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. But by 2020, those deals became the focal point of a major antitrust lawsuit seeking to break up the company. Since then, Meta\u2019s acquisitions and competitive actions have faced intense scrutiny in the US and around the world, and its dealmaking leveled off. In 2020, it closed 10 acquisitions worth a total of $1.37 billion, according to data compiled by PitchBook; as it fought monopolization claims, its deal count and value dropped each year through 2024.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But for the most part, the company has weathered regulatory pressure, and Meta\u2019s dealmaking picked up again in 2025. Meta won against the FTC\u2019s anti-monopoly claims<\/a>, and it was allowed to buy the virtual reality fitness startup Within<\/a> after the FTC took it to trial (a few years later, it announced it would stop making content<\/a> for Within\u2019s flagship game, only to later spin it off<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Through political crisis after political crisis, Meta has dodged the worst-case outcomes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Long-standing fears about Meta\u2019s data collection efforts also reached a boiling point in 2018, when reporters uncovered evidence that London elections consultancy Cambridge Analytica had harvested millions of Facebook profiles to analyze and target users with pro-Trump messaging in 2016. That led to a flood of calls among users to #DeleteFacebook, even from Brian Acton<\/a>, cofounder of WhatsApp.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But Zuckerberg later told The New York Times<\/em><\/a> that the movement hadn\u2019t resulted in any \u201cmeaningful\u201d defection<\/a> from the platform. In Europe, Meta was ordered to make changes impacting its ad-targeting practices after a $1.3 billion fine<\/a>, but in the US lawmakers are still unable to agree on an industry-wide data privacy law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While President Donald Trump once threatened to throw Zuckerberg in prison for life<\/a>, the CEO seems to have successfully gotten on the Trump administration\u2019s good side after ditching the fact-checking program the president had criticized<\/a>, disbanding its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team<\/a>, and agreeing to a $25 million settlement<\/a> over Trump\u2019s lawsuit for suspending his account. Meanwhile, Meta\u2019s apps benefited from the brief ban of TikTok<\/a> in the US, though Trump cut that period short through repeated enforcement delays. Meta\u2019s courting of the Trump administration may leave it ripe for scrutiny under a Democratic administration, but meaningful consequences could remain years away, if they come at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Most recently, Meta\u2019s most pressing policy challenge has been child safety. For the first half of the year, it appeared to be caught on its back foot. Two juries issued decisive blows to the company, resulting in close to a billion dollars in fines across an individual plaintiff\u2019s case in Los Angeles<\/a> and a case brought by New Mexico\u2019s attorney general<\/a>. But the New Mexico judge later declined to impose the most disruptive structural changes the AG had asked for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On the surface, a landmark settlement with 47 other state AGs in August looked even worse for Meta. The settlement included significant changes: new age assurance benchmarks, a two-hour daily usage limit (with exceptions for messaging and longform content), and default restrictions on nighttime and school hour notifications for teens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But it also presented Meta an opportunity to turn attention onto its rivals. The company called on TikTok, YouTube, and Snap to adopt similar limits, and it tied part of its settlement payout to their actions. This helped Meta twice over: It could put a target on its competitors\u2019 backs while mitigating the potential negative business impact of its own deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n New child safety regulations could end up helping Meta as well. eMarketer forecasts that Snap and TikTok would feel more of a hit than Meta if a nationwide classroom cellphone ban, another popular proposal, went into effect. TikTok would lose out on more than $1.25 billion in ad revenue this year, the firm estimates, and Snap\u2019s ad revenue would be especially vulnerable because of the high concentration of teens on the platform who use the app throughout the day. A hit on Meta\u2019s revenue, meanwhile, would \u201chardly register,\u201d eMarketer says, thanks to its scale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta could lose out under child safety regulations \u2014 but its competitors might lose more<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Even so, Meta\u2019s legal battles over kids\u2019 safety aren\u2019t over. Meta and other tech companies still face thousands of lawsuits from individual plaintiffs and school districts, likely culminating in a blanket settlement. The scope of cases and potential penalties is so large that it\u2019s difficult to understand exactly how much risk they carry. It would take quite a lot for Meta to feel the sting, but the billions in settlements and court orders are beginning to add up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta has already invested huge sums into fighting these cases. In the second quarter alone, it took a $2.4 billion charge over litigation expenses. Prior to Meta\u2019s recent settlement with state AGs, Peter Chapman, deputy director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute, said that \u201csuggests to me that they\u2019re playing a long game\u201d around the First Amendment and online liability shield Section 230.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Following the settlement news, Chapman says he still sees it as early days amid the mountain of litigation before Meta and other tech companies, but \u201cthe long game certainly has changed.\u201d Now it seems to include targeting industry competitors to get on board with the terms Meta already accepted, while a fight to preserve its protections under Section 230 will likely continue through appeals of the earlier cases Meta lost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta\u2019s settlement may bring some solace to investors who were unsure how to price in its legal risk. After the news of the deal, its stock price shot up. \u201cThe state AGs got an okay deal. I don\u2019t think they knocked it out of the park,\u201d says Paul Gallant, a tech policy analyst at investment bank TD Cowen. As a result, Meta shareholders should have \u201cconfidence that the company knows how to manage the government.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The $17 billion settlement represents an \u201cimmaterial\u201d amount for Meta, Gallant says. In the last quarterly earnings report<\/a>, Meta said it made more than $60 billion. But additional cases still present some risk, and large fines may be more of a problem today than when the European Union levied them in the past. \u201cThe companies are spending so much on AI infrastructure that cashflow is a bigger focus of Meta\u2019s stockholders, especially if the damage awards get into the tens of billions or more,\u201d Gallant says. And unlike the tactics at its disposal to fight off impending legislation, Gallant adds, \u201cof all of the features of the US governmental system, the least controllable by Meta is juries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThese massive trials are happening against this company, and then what is Mark Zuckerberg doing? Putting out an AI manifesto.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n State and local governments also appear ready to take on tech while federal efforts stall, including in Meta\u2019s latest area of focus, AI. Many are looking at how they can rein in AI and deal with the energy demands it creates on their electrical grids. Data centers have become a flashpoint across the country, and a nationwide push for a slowdown could be particularly meaningful for Meta and other businesses in the AI race. \u201cThat\u2019s the thing that could really not just slow them, but slow everybody down \u2014 having enough compute,\u201d says Harbath. \u201cWe talk so much about what happens at the federal level, but I actually think the biggest risk to Meta and these tech companies right now is at the hyper-local level.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zuckerberg has become the face of many of these battles, testifying for hours before policymakers and juries, and even standing up in Congress to apologize to parents<\/a> who lost children after battles with online harms. The public testimonies have largely not seemed to endear him any further to his critics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/268630_META_FALLING_APART_CVIRGINA_SPOT_2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100\"\/)
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/268630_META_FALLING_APART_CVIRGINA_SPOT_46.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100\"\/)
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n