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Mark Zuckerberg Creating AI Version Of Himself So Meta Staff Can Talk To Him Directly 

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Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is working on creating an artificial intelligence version of their founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, so that the company’s 79,000 employees can “talk directly” to the boss when they need him.

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Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta In Landmark Trial Regarding Social Media Addiction 

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently testified during a landmark trial in Los Angeles Superior Court regarding social media addiction and safety, particularly in teenagers and kids.

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Mark Zuckerberg Hands Out Noise-Canceling Headphones and Donuts as Furious Neighbors Endure Years of Construction

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is no stranger to criticism online. Now, he’s facing it offline too—from the people who live next door.

The 41-year-old billionaire has been embroiled in a simmering feud with residents of Palo Alto’s Crescent Park, the affluent neighborhood where he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have been steadily expanding a massive residential compound for over a decade. The project, estimated to be worth around $110 million, has disrupted the once-quiet community with nonstop building, security patrols, and a revolving door of contractors.

This week, Zuckerberg attempted a peace offering. Families disturbed by the grinding sounds of construction received noise-canceling headphones, bottles of sparkling wine, and boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. The gesture, first reported by Fortune, was intended as a neighborly olive branch. Instead, it has fueled fresh outrage.

The tension has been building for years. In 2011, Zuckerberg made his first Crescent Park purchase: a $7 million home that remains the centerpiece of his estate. Since then, he has scooped up 10 additional houses, often paying well above market value. Some homeowners recall being approached out of the blue by intermediaries offering millions more than their property’s worth.

The effect has been dramatic. What was once a patch of tree-lined streets is now dotted with guesthouses, sprawling gardens, and elaborate security systems. One neighbor described the takeover bluntly: “No neighborhood wants to be occupied,” longtime resident Michael Kieschnick told The New York Times. “But that’s exactly what they’ve done.”

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Property records reviewed by the Times reveal the scale of the transformation. A 2012 purchase added a $4.8 million house behind the couple’s main residence. In 2013 alone, Zuckerberg bought three more properties—one for $10.5 million and two more for $14 million and $14.5 million each. By 2022, the spree extended across the street, where he paid $5.7 million, reportedly $200,000 above the asking price.

Construction crews have since outfitted the compound with a hydro-floor swimming pool that can vanish beneath a retractable deck, a pickleball court, and a statue dedicated to Chan. Beneath the manicured lawns, a 7,000-square-foot underground bunker connects several of the homes. One property has even been repurposed as a private school, according to The New York Times.

“Another property has been used for the past few years as a private school for 14 children, even though that is not an allowable use of a house in the neighborhood under city code. Six adults, including four teachers, worked there this past school year.”

For many neighbors, the daily inconvenience of this empire-building outweighs the architectural marvels. The ceaseless rumble of bulldozers, jackhammers, and trucks has become a familiar part of the neighborhood’s soundscape. Zuckerberg’s response—headphones, wine, and donuts—has only amplified the criticism.

On social media platform X, reactions were swift.

“Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy headphones to silence all who complain about your excessively opulent lifestyle.”

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Another user added: “Sorry for being an insufferable d—enozzle, here are some noise-canceling headphones. These people live in such a different world than us, and it’s sickening.”

Despite owning what amounts to an entire block, Zuckerberg himself is largely absent from day-to-day neighborhood life. Residents told The New York Times that he is rarely spotted outside, though his presence is felt through the elaborate web of security cameras, guards, and the seemingly endless rotation of contractors.

Ironically, the CEO who built his empire on connecting people has instead insulated himself from his community. The Crescent Park compound is designed for privacy, even secrecy, but the scope of his project has made it impossible to ignore.

When Zuckerberg first planted roots in Palo Alto, his fortune was estimated at $13.5 billion. Today, it exceeds $250 billion. His real estate holdings have grown in tandem with his wealth, transforming Crescent Park into a billionaire’s enclave.

What began with one $7 million house has expanded into a neighborhood-sized buffer zone. And for those who once described their block as “idyllic,” the constant construction has replaced tranquility with tension.

Zuckerberg’s headphones and donuts may offer a temporary distraction from the noise. Still, to many of his neighbors, the gifts symbolize something larger: the yawning gulf between Silicon Valley’s richest and the communities they inhabit.

As one resident put it, the Zuckerbergs haven’t just moved in. They’ve taken over.

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Meta Settles Shareholder Lawsuit Tied to $5B FTC Penalty, Zuckerberg Avoids Testimony

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Meta has reached a settlement in a high-profile shareholder lawsuit that accused the company’s board of failing to prevent massive breaches of user data—an oversight that plaintiffs said cost the company billions.

The agreement, revealed Thursday morning in a Delaware courtroom, came just as the second day of an anticipated eight-day trial was set to begin. A lawyer representing the plaintiffs, a group of pension funds with minor Meta holdings, informed the judge that the parties had reached a resolution.

The lawsuit had alleged that Meta’s directors ignored a 2012 consent decree with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which required Facebook to protect user privacy more aggressively.

That failure, plaintiffs claimed, ultimately led to the 2019 $5 billion FTC settlement, one of the largest ever imposed on a tech company, following data privacy lapses that enabled groups like Cambridge Analytica to access vast swaths of user data.

Speaking of both settlements and Zuckerberg’s successful evasion of testifying, Jason Kint, the head of Digital Content Next, a trade group for content providers, said,  “That reckoning is now left unresolved.”

“Facebook has successfully remade the ‘Cambridge Analytica’ scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unraveling of its entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal, unbridled sharing of personal data.”

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While the specifics of Thursday’s settlement remain confidential, they are expected to be formally filed with the Delaware Court of Chancery in the coming weeks. A source close to the negotiations said discussions had stretched on for months and continued late into Wednesday evening, even after the trial had begun. According to this source, Meta’s directors and officers’ insurance policy will foot the bill.

The legal action, known as a derivative lawsuit, means that any proceeds will go to the company itself rather than being distributed directly to the shareholders. Such cases are rare but growing in frequency, as boards of major corporations increasingly face scrutiny over operational misconduct. However, Kint remains unsatisfied.

“This settlement may bring relief to the parties involved, but it’s a missed opportunity for public accountability.”

This case marked the first time Meta’s board was directly challenged in a Delaware trial over its internal oversight practices. The proceedings had been closely watched, not only because of the high-profile names involved, but also for the precedent it could set for corporate accountability.

Among the witnesses was Jeff Zients, who served on Meta’s board from 2018 to 2020 and was White House Chief of Staff under former President Joe Biden. He testified on Wednesday. Marc Andreessen, the influential venture capitalist and longtime Meta director, was slated to take the stand Thursday.

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Company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with former COO Sheryl Sandberg, were expected to appear next week.

Meta’s legal team had been preparing to argue that the board’s decision to settle with the FTC in 2019 was reasonable and not indicative of negligence. However, the plaintiffs claimed that Zuckerberg’s control over the company allowed him to shape the outcome in a way that protected him from personal accountability, while leaving Meta to shoulder the financial burden.

Zuckerberg was also accused of insider trading, with the plaintiffs alleging he sold Meta stock while fully aware of the looming fallout from the company’s data privacy failures.

The case comes amid broader debate within the tech world over Delaware’s role as the go-to corporate jurisdiction. Like Tesla and Dropbox, Meta has reportedly been exploring a potential relocation to a state more favorable to founder-led governance structures. Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm co-founded by Andreessen, recently announced plans to move a major subsidiary to Nevada and encouraged others in tech to consider similar moves.

Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, who presided over the case, congratulated both parties on the resolution and stated that she looked forward to reviewing the final terms once they were submitted.

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Zuckerberg Testifies in Landmark Antitrust Trial Against Meta

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared as the first witness in a landmark antitrust trial defending his company, which owns Facebook, against accusations that it holds a monopoly in the social media industry. The trial is anticipated to last for another two months.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) initiated the case in 2020, alleging Meta unfairly cemented its dominance in the market by acquiring Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. The FTC aims to dismantle Meta by requiring the spin-off of Instagram or WhatsApp. In his opening statements Monday, Daniel Matheson, lead attorney for the FTC, stated, “There’s nothing wrong with Meta innovating. It’s what happened next that is a problem.”

Dressed in a dark suit and pale blue tie, Zuckerberg took the stand Monday, where he argued that there were enough competitors in the space, citing TikTok, YouTube, and X as significant rivals.

Central to the FTC’s case are internal emails from Zuckerberg dating back to 2011, in which he noted Instagram’s rapid growth. Another email in 2012 revealed Zuckerberg’s concern that his company was falling “so far behind that we don’t even understand how far behind we are… I worry that it will take us too long to catch up.”

“Acquiring these competitive threats has enabled Facebook to sustain its dominance—to the detriment of competition and users—not by competing on the merits, but by avoiding competition.”

On the stand, Zuckerberg dismissed these as “relatively early” thoughts on acquiring the app and emphasized that Meta substantially enhanced Instagram post-acquisition.

Zuckerberg further insisted that Instagram’s appeal was its advanced camera technology rather than its social networking capabilities and maintained that the company sought acquisitions to enhance its services rather than stifle competition.

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“Acquisitions to improve and grow have never been found unlawful, and they should not be found unlawful here,” Meta’s lead lawyer, Mark Hansen, argued. He characterized the FTC lawsuit as “misguided” and insisted that Meta “acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to improve and grow them alongside Facebook.”

“How can the FTC maintain this monopolization case when [Meta] has never charged users a cent?”

However, Matheson highlighted how Zuckerberg spoke about “neutralizing” Instagram, calling it “a smoking gun” back in his 2012 memo.

“They decided that competition was too hard and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them.”

Meta, boasting 3.27 billion daily active users across its platforms as of last year, anticipates Instagram will generate more than half of its U.S. advertising revenue in 2025, according to market research firm Emarketer. “Instagram has also been picking up the slack for Facebook on the user front, particularly among young people, for a long time,” Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg told the Associated Press.

“The trial also comes as Meta is trying to bring back OG Facebook in an effort to appeal to Gen Z and younger users as they join social media. Social media usage is far more fragmented today than it was in 2012 when Facebook acquired Instagram, and Facebook isn’t where the cool college kids hang out anymore. Meta needs Instagram to continue growing, especially as more advertisers think Instagram-first with their Meta budgets.”

The trial unfolds amidst claims that Zuckerberg actively sought former President Trump’s intervention to dismiss the FTC’s case. The Wall Street Journal reported meetings between Zuckerberg and Trump, coinciding with Meta’s notable actions favoring Trump and his allies.

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These include a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund, the appointment of Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White and former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick to Meta’s board. In January, Meta rolled back content moderation policies frequently criticized by Republicans as censorship. Additionally, Meta agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle litigation over his account suspension following the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.

When asked by the BBC to confirm Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts, Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro avoided a direct response, instead focusing on the broader impact of any decision.

“Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI.”

“The FTC’s lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”

This trial coincides with another significant antitrust case against Google. The Department of Justice recently succeeded in establishing Google’s monopoly over online search, where they hold a market share of around 90%, prompting ongoing discussions about potential divestitures.

However, experts like Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an associate professor of business law at the University of Georgia, suggest the FTC faces greater difficulty proving Meta’s market dominance, highlighting the comparatively competitive landscape in the social networking industry.

“I think they have a real uphill battle. They have a long road before any consideration of divestiture of Instagram or WhatsApp is considered.”

Amazon and Apple also remain subjects of ongoing antitrust litigation by U.S. authorities.

Mark Zuckerberg, The Future Of Meta, And The Publics Mixed Reaction To Technological Advancement

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Mark Zuckerberg has been a key figure in the realm of technology, social media, and the internet for two decades. During such a transformative period for America, Zuckerberg has continued to announce advancements in his company Meta, parent company to popular social media apps Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. With the incorporation of artificial intelligence, the loosening of fact-checking, and the removal of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, the general public is uncertain about the future of the internet and just how protected their online presence truly is.

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Meta to End Fact-Checking Across Its Platforms, Including Facebook and Instagram

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Meta is revising its content review policies, eliminating fact-checking across its platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Instead, the company will introduce user-generated “community notes,” akin to the approach taken by Elon Musk’s X.

Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the changes on Tuesday, stating, “Fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”

“We’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”

Zuckerberg admitted that this decision is expected to also increase harmful content on the platform.

“The reality is this is a tradeoff. It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”

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Following allegations that it had not been able to prevent foreign actors from using its platforms to disseminate false material and foment dissension among Americans, the corporation started an independent fact-checking program in 2016.

It has since still struggled with the proliferation of heated issues on its platform, including hate speech, violence, anti-vaccination posts, and election-related disinformation.

According to CNN, Meta informed Trump’s team that the change was coming beforehand. In addition to Zuckerberg’s efforts to strengthen his connection with Trump before the president-elect takes office later this month, the move coincides with a larger apparent ideological tilt to the right inside Meta’s upper echelons.

The Real Facebook Oversight Board, an outside accountability organization comprised of academics, lawyers, and civil rights advocates, including early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, said in a statement that the policy changes represent Meta going “full MAGA.”

“Meta’s announcement today is a retreat from any sane and safe approach to content moderation. Censorship is a manufactured crisis, political pandering to signal that Meta’s platforms are open for business to far-right propaganda. Twitter’s shift from fact-checking has turned the platform into a cesspool; Zuckerberg is joining them in a race to the bottom.”

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Following his acquisition of X, formerly known as Twittter, Elon Musk implemented a similar policy. After dissolving the company’s fact-checking teams and partnerships, Musk enforced using user-generated “community notes” as the only means of fact-checking on the platform.

The automatic systems that check for policy infractions, which Meta claims have led to “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been,” will also be modified. Now, the algorithms will exclusively look for unlawful and “high-severity” infractions, such as drug usage, terrorism, child sexual exploitation, fraud, and scams.

Meta will move its trust and safety teams from California to Texas and other US locations. “I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.

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Threads Reaches 100 Million Sign-Ups As Twitter’s Traffic Falls

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In just five days, 100 million users have signed up for Twitter’s rival app, Threads. Meanwhile, Twitter’s user traffic has dropped as the platform continues to battle outages and controversies over its lax moderation policies.

The new platform’s rapid expansion has already outpaced that of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s viral chatbot, which had reached 10 million users in 40 days.

Due to Europe’s intricate regulatory systems, the app has not yet been released there. If it does launch there, it can potentially pose a serious threat to Twitter, which has 238 million daily active users.

Threads’s success can largely be traced to its integration with Meta’s Instagram service. New users can sign up using their already established Instagram handle.

In a post on the platform, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, shared his excitement for the speed of the app’s growth.

“Threads reached 100 million sign-ups over the weekend. That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. Can’t believe it’s only been 5 days!”

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Similarweb, a data company specializing in web analytics, found that in the first two full days Threads was generally available, web traffic to Twitter was down 5 percent compared to the previous week. According to the company, Twitter has seen an 11% drop in website traffic compared to the same period in 2022.

A letter from Elon Musk’s longtime attorney Alex Spiro to Meta alleging “unlawful misappropriation” of trade secrets shows that Musk, Twitter’s owner, is already concerned about Threads.

The letter accuses Threads of hiring former Twitter employees to build a “copycat” platform using confidential information. In a tweet, Elon Musk acknowledged the letter, stating, “Competition is fine, cheating is not.”

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a Threads post that Meta’s purpose is not to replace Twitter but rather “to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter.”

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“The goal isn’t to replace Twitter. The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter. Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads – they have on Instagram as well to some extent – but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.”

Messages posted on Threads will have a 500-character limit. Like on Twitter, users can reply to, repost and quote other user posts. The app has a similar aesthetic to Instagram and also allows users to share posts from Threads directly to their Instagram stories.

Accounts can be public or private, and verification on Instagram carries over to Threads. Mark Zuckerberg also called the app a “public space” in a Threads post after its launch.

“The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation. We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.”

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Meta Announces They’re Prioritizing Advancing Artificial Intelligence As A Company 

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Almost two years after Facebook rebranded as Meta and advertised giving the world a futuristic landscape through the metaverse, the company announced that now, their top investment priority is advancing artificial intelligence (AI). 

CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent out a letter to Meta staff on Tuesday, announcing plans to lay off 10,000 employees as a means of focusing on efficiency for the company; a move that was first announced last month in Meta’s quarterly earnings call. 

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Zuckerberg now says Meta will “focus mostly on cutting costs and streamlining projects. Building the metaverse remains central to defining the future of social connection, Zuckerberg wrote.

“Our single largest investment is in advancing AI and building it into every one of our products.” 

He added information on how AI tools can help “users of its apps express themselves and discover new content, but also new AI tools can be used to increase efficiencies internally by helping engineers write better code faster.”

The CEO described last year as a “humbling wake-up call as the world economy changed, competitive pressures grew, and our growth slowed considerably.”

AI in general has been taking over the tech world, and Meta is no different, in fact, the company has been involved in AI research and development since it was called Facebook. 

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“I do think it is a good thing to focus on AI,” Ali Mogharabi, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, told CNN. 

“Meta’s investments in AI has benefits on both ends because it can improve efficiency for engineers creating products, and because incorporating AI features into Meta’s lineup of apps will potentially create more engagement time for users, which can then drive advertising revenue,” he explained.

“A lot of the investments in AI, and a lot of enhancements that come from those investments in AI, could actually be applicable to the entire metaverse project,” Mogharabi stated. 

Last year, Meta lost more than $13 billion from its “Reality Labs” unit, the business sector focused on developing and expanding the metaverse. This shift comes after multiple big investors expressed their concerns over the lack of growth that came from the sector. 

Angelo Zino, a senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, said “the second round of layoffs at Meta officially make us convinced that Mark Zuckerberg has completely switched gears, altering the narrative of the company to one focused on efficiencies rather than looking to grow the metaverse at any cost.”

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The Newest VR Headset To Be Released In October From Meta

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On Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the latest addition to his line of virtual reality headsets will be making their debut in October.

The new product from Meta is expected to be fully revealed at the Meta’s annual Connect event which usually takes place sometime within the month of October.

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The codenamed “Project Cambria” is set to contain features that will help users experience the feeling of social presence and have them feel more connected with other users.

Some of the features that will be included with the new VR headset will be more eye- and facial- tracking features. These new features will allow digital avatars to smile and frown within the virtual reality. 

“For me, this stuff is all about, like, helping people connect… I just started thinking about… what would be the ultimate expression of, basically, people using technology to feel present with each other, right? It’s not phones, it’s not computers.”

The new VR headset is supposed to contain a high-resolution color screen, internal sensor for the eye tracking and sophisticated augmented reality. 

The name of the VR headset has yet to be revealed but the cost of the headset is projected to cost around $800. This is a significant price jump up from the popular Quest 2 headset which costed $399 to $499 depending on the model. 

“In the previous version eye contact was all just AI simulated, we didn’t actually know when you were making eye contact because we weren’t tracking the eyes. Now for this version, and hopefully a lot of the different ones we build going forward, you’ll be able to have realistic facial expressions and more transmitted directly to your avatar,” said Zuckerberg. 

In a recent interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Rogan was allowed to be one of the first people who got to try out the new VR headset. He stated that he was impressed with all the features and how well his avatar was able to match his facial expression and eyes. 

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“It’s getting to the point where it’s mimicking human patterns in kind of a creepy way,” said Rogan. 

Over the last few years, Meta has been putting a lot of their effort and money into VR and augmented reality to keep expanding and evolving the world of computers and how people interact with them. 

According to Digital Trends, VR players usually identify themselves and have a strong connection to their alternates in virtual reality where real connections can be formed. 

With the increase of the technology, it could become a huge stepping stone in the world of virtual reality.