In the social media wars Facebook, under its Meta umbrella, has been losing. In February, the company reported a drop in the number of daily users of the app for the first time, erasing $200 billion of its value, about 25 percent.

“Although the direction is clear, our path forward is not yet clearly defined,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time, “Last year it was all about putting a stake in the ground about where we’re headed. This year is about execution.”

The stakes and execution was further investment in the Metaverse, a virtual world with a comprehensive view of the Internet and social interactions through virtual reality technology. Zuckerberg has invested a lot of time in the project and has been the center of a major marketing push. Since it opened with…