Yes but the original founders did that. Zuckerberg took it from them and immediately lied about data sharing, there's a reason why the founders left in disgust
The problem with Facebook's products always comes down to one overriding fact, Zuckerberg's desire to win over everybody else; he's constantly been accused of stealing from people, it's not a surprise everything he owns is either extremely coercive or broken from a technical standpoint
Sure, network effects are hard to overcome; my point is that Zuckerberg bought it as a competition killing move so they're not likely to put any quality control into it
I think people are missing the point when they call Metaverse a 'misstep' because it implies Zuckerberg was a good actor who just happened to get this one thing wrong... if you look through his history of things like forced Whatsapp sharing (plus Onavo), Free Basics, all of the shitty things the company does... the Metaverse was never a good faith effort and people need to understand that; newsflash, he's not a shining example of what a good person is
(And the whole stealing Facebook from other people in the first place, anyway)
My first impression of this is literally "So, maybe a good idea, but isn't this Zuckerberg just copying yet another person like he's always done forever?"
The thing is, I wouldn't want to use Whatsapp considering how Facebook got it: spy on people with Onavo and then basically pressure the original founders out of the company, and then do stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662215... that doesn't sound like stewards I'd trust
Google has a lot of failures of their own but they seem at least semi-committed to an open internet (with actual ethical standards), something I can't exactly say for Zuckerberg
And yet Meta was involved with things like Free Basics, or forcing the Oculus account with a bait and switch, and repeatedly lying about Whatsapp - but I'm sure this Instagram thing is much worse, somehow