Comment by bentt
4 days ago
It would appear that the Metaverse (as envisioned by Meta) was nothing more than a way to "grow" when there was no other reasonable path. It was a solution to this problem and this problem alone. Nobody wanted it.
Then AI comes along and offers real growth opportunity. But of course, Meta fumbled that one out of the gate because they are more interested in winning than in actually offering anything of value. So they figured they could sabotage the whole thing by open sourcing Llama. Then they got steamrolled by everyone actually creating value for people instead of following their tried and true parasite model.
No tech company in this era has been more destructive to society than Meta. Their utter lack of principles has led them down this path. Ironically the most value they have generated is to their investors and especially their employees who are all wealthy now, funded with advertising dollars from across the economy.
How would the sabotage-by-open-sourcing strategy have worked?
By giving away a viable product to steal the revenue stream from OpenAI in hopes they'd die on the vine. To draw developer attention towards them and take ownership of a thriving ecosystem like a honeypot so they could bait and switch them towards some kind of perverse ad-driven nightmare once they were dependent on them. You know, the standard Zuck playbook.