More than one million people have been helped to get online through a national digital inclusion plan led by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The initiative targets groups including older people, jobseekers and rural communities.
The programme has delivered over 22,000 donated devices and funded more than 80 local projects with £11.9 million. Support includes improved connectivity, access to affordable services and training to build essential digital skills.
Efforts also focus on strengthening long-term capabilities, with the government taking control of the national digital skills framework. Updates will reflect changing needs, such as online safety and the growing role of AI in everyday life.
British officials say the plan is helping people find work, manage finances and access services more easily. Further expansion is expected as authorities work with industry and charities to reach more communities.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Public concern over big tech companies is growing in Switzerland, according to a new survey by gfs.bern conducted on behalf of the Mercator Foundation Switzerland. A large majority of respondents view major technology firms as primarily profit-driven, while also expressing unease about their broader influence on society and politics.
Survey findings show that 90% of respondents believe big tech companies are mainly motivated by profit, while 94% support stronger protections for children and young people on social media platforms. Concerns extend beyond commercial behaviour, with 84% worried about political influence from the countries where these companies are based and 82% fearing increasing dependence on firms from the United States and China.
Overall perceptions in Switzerland remain mixed: 21% of respondents express a positive view of big tech companies, 40% hold a neutral stance, and 38% report negative impressions. Similar attitudes have been observed across Europe, where surveys in countries such as France and Germany indicate that many citizens consider existing regulatory frameworks insufficient.
Despite concerns about corporate influence, attitudes towards digitalisation itself remain broadly positive. Around 58% of respondents see digitalisation as beneficial overall, and 53% believe it offers personal advantages. However, only 48% think it benefits society as a whole, while 46% perceive its impact on democratic processes as negative.
A strong majority expects public institutions to take on greater responsibility for managing digital transformation. Around 88% support government efforts to ensure transparency in AI decision-making, while 86% want human oversight in critical situations. High levels of trust in Swiss authorities suggest public backing for a more active state role in shaping digital policy and safeguarding democratic values.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech, and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Legislative efforts in France signal a shift toward stricter governance of youth access to digital platforms, with policymakers preparing to debate a ban on social media use for children under 15.
A proposal that forms part of a broader strategy to address concerns over online harms and excessive screen exposure among adolescents.
These measures reflect increasing reliance on regulatory intervention instead of voluntary platform safeguards, as evidence links prolonged digital engagement with risks such as cyberbullying, disrupted sleep patterns and exposure to harmful content.
Political backing for the initiative has emerged from figures aligned with Emmanuel Macron, reinforcing the government’s position that stronger oversight of digital environments is necessary. The proposal also mirrors developments in Australia, where similar restrictions have already entered into force.
A debate that is further influenced by legal actions targeting major platforms, including TikTok and Meta, amid allegations that algorithmic systems contribute to harmful user experiences.
The outcome of the parliamentary discussions in France is expected to shape future approaches to child safety, platform accountability and digital rights governance across Europe.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
In 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Horizon, a VR social experience that allows users to interact, create custom avatars, and design virtual spaces. Zuckerberg saw the platform, later renamed Horizon Worlds, as the beginning of a new era of VR social networks, with users trading face-to-face interactions for digital ones.
To show his confidence in VR, Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook Inc. as Meta Platforms Inc. in October 2021, illustrating the company’s shift toward the metaverse as a broad virtual environment intended to integrate social interaction, work, commerce, and entertainment. Building on this new vision, Meta’s ambitions expanded beyond social interaction and entertainment, with the development roadmap including virtual real estate purchases and collaboration in virtual co-working spaces.
Fast forward to 17 March 2026, and the scale of Meta’s retreat from the metaverse vision has become unmistakable. In an official update, the company said it was ‘separating’ VR from Horizon so that each platform could grow with greater focus, while also making Horizon Worlds a mobile-only experience. Under the plan, Horizon Worlds and Events would disappear from the Quest Store by 31 March 2026, several flagship worlds would no longer be available in VR, and the Horizon Worlds app itself would be removed from Quest on 15 June 2026, ending VR access to Worlds altogether.
Yet Meta soon reversed part of the decision. In an Instagram Stories Q&A, CTO Andrew Bosworth said Horizon Worlds would remain available in VR after user backlash. Even so, the greater shift remained unchanged: Horizon Worlds was no longer a flagship VR project, but a much narrower product that reflected a clear contraction of Meta’s original metaverse ambition.
As it stands, Meta’s USD 80 billion investment seems less like a gateway to a new socio-technological era and more like one of the most expensive strategic miscalculations of the 21st century. The sunsetting of Horizon Worlds was certainly not a decision made on a whim, which begs the question: Why did the metaverse fail in the first place? Does it have a future in the AI landscape, and what does its retreat say about the politics of designing the future through corporate platforms?
Metaverse’s mainstream collapse
The most obvious reason for the metaverse’s failure was that it never became a mainstream social space. Meta’s strategy rested on the belief that large numbers of people would start using immersive virtual worlds as a normal setting for interaction, entertainment, and creative activity. The shift never happened at the scale needed to sustain the company’s ambitions.
One reason was friction. VR headsets were less practical than phones, more isolating than social media, and harder to integrate into everyday routines than the platforms people already used to communicate. Entering the virtual world required extra time, extra hardware, and openness to adapt to a different social environment. Most digital habits, however, are built around speed, familiarity, and ease of access.
Meta’s own March 2026 decision makes that failure difficult to deny. A company still convinced that immersive social VR was on its way to becoming mainstream would not have moved Horizon Worlds away from Quest and towards mobile. The shift suggested that the metaverse had failed to move from technological promise to everyday social practice.
Metaverse’s failure was not just one of convenience. It also struggled because it was never presented simply as a new digital space. It was framed as a future built largely on Meta’s own terms, with access tied to the company’s hardware, platforms, rules, and wider ecosystem. Such decisions made the metaverse feel less like an open evolution of the internet and more like a tightly managed corporate environment.
The distinction mattered because Meta was not merely launching another product. It was promoting a vision of how people might one day work, socialise, shop, and create online. Yet the more expansive that vision became, the more obvious it was that the system behind it remained closed and centralised. A future digital environment is harder to embrace when a single company controls the devices, spaces, distribution, and boundaries of participation.
Meta’s handling of Horizon Worlds clearly exposed that tension. The company could remove features, reshape access, alter incentives, and redirect the platform from the top down. Such a level of control may be standard for a private platform, but it sits uneasily with claims about building the next phase of digital life. In that sense, the metaverse failed not only because people were unconvinced by VR, but because its version of the future felt too corporate, too enclosed, and too disconnected from the openness people still associate with the internet.
Metaverse’s economic contradiction
The metaverse did not fail only as a social project. It also became increasingly difficult to justify on economic grounds. Meta spent heavily on Reality Labs while generating only limited returns from those investments. In its 2025 annual filing, the company said Reality Labs had reduced overall operating profit by around USD 19.19 billion for the year, while warning that similar losses would continue into 2026.
Losses on that scale might still have been acceptable if the metaverse had shown clear signs of momentum. However, there was little evidence of mass adoption, strong retention, or a durable path to monetisation. Virtual land, digital goods, branded experiences, and immersive workspaces never developed into the economic base of a new internet layer.
Instead, the metaverse began to look less like a future growth engine and more like a costly experiment with uncertain returns. The gap between spending and payoff became harder to ignore, especially as Meta continued to frame the metaverse as a long-term strategic priority. What used to be sold as the company’s next major frontier was increasingly difficult to justify in commercial terms.
The broader strategic context also changed. Meta’s own forward-looking statements pointed to increased hiring and spending in 2026, especially in AI. In practice, this meant the company was no longer choosing between the metaverse and inactivity, but between two competing visions of the future. AI was already delivering tangible gains in product development, infrastructure, and investor confidence.
In that competition for attention and capital, the metaverse lost. Meta’s pullback was also not an isolated case. Microsoft moved away from metaverse-first ambitions as well, retiring the Immersive space (3D) view in Teams meetings, Microsoft Mesh on the web, and Mesh apps for PC and Quest in December 2025. The services were replaced by immersive events in Teams, a narrower offering built around specific workplace functions rather than a broad metaverse vision.
The wider retreat matters because it suggests the problem was not limited to Meta’s execution. Another major tech company also stepped back from standalone immersive environments and turned to more limited, use-specific tools instead. A larger pattern appeared from that shift: grand metaverse narratives gave way to practical features, embedded tools, and industry-specific uses. In that sense, the metaverse has not entirely disappeared, but it did lose its status as the next internet.
Metaverse’s afterlife in the age of AI
The metaverse’s decline does not necessarily imply a complete disappearance. What seems more likely is that parts of it will survive in altered form, detached from the sweeping vision that once surrounded it. Rather than continuing as a standalone digital world meant to transform social life, the metaverse may persist as a set of tools, features, and immersive functions folded into other technologies.
AI is likely to play a role in that transition. It can lower the cost of building virtual environments, speed up avatar creation, automate elements of interaction design, and make digital spaces more responsive. In this sense, AI may succeed where the original metaverse struggled, not by reviving the same vision, but by making parts of it more practical and easier to use.
Such a distinction is important because it shifts the focus from ideology to utility. The metaverse was once marketed as the next stage of the internet, yet its more durable applications now appear to lie in narrower settings where immersion serves a clear purpose. Training, design, simulation, and industrial planning are all contexts in which virtual environments can offer measurable value without becoming a universal social destination.
What might survive, then, is not the metaverse as it was originally imagined, but a smaller set of immersive capabilities embedded in gaming, education, industry, and workplace systems. Avatars, digital agents, simulations, and adaptive virtual spaces may all remain relevant, but as components rather than the foundation of a new social order.
The shift also helps explain the political lesson of the metaverse’s collapse. Large-scale investment, aggressive branding, and executive certainty were not enough to secure public legitimacy. Meta tried to present the metaverse as an inevitable horizon, yet users did not embrace it, markets did not reward it in proportion to the spending, and the company itself eventually narrowed the project it had once elevated into a corporate identity.
In that sense, the metaverse matters even in failure. Its retreat does not simply mark the end of an overhyped product cycle. It also reveals the limits of top-down corporate future-making, especially when private platforms try to define the direction of collective digital life before society has decided whether such a future is either desirable or necessary.
Conclusion
The metaverse failed because it asked too much of users, promised too much to investors, and concentrated too much power in a platform model that never convincingly earned public trust. Meta’s retreat from Horizon Worlds makes that failure difficult to ignore, while Microsoft’s parallel narrowing of immersive ambitions suggests the problem extended beyond one company’s misjudgement.
Immersive VR technologies are unlikely to vanish, and AI may even extend some of their useful applications. Yet the metaverse as a universal social future has largely collapsed under the combined weight of weak adoption, unsustainable economics, and an overly corporate vision of digital life. What remains is not the next internet, but a reminder that the future cannot simply be declared into existence by the companies most eager to own it.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech, and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
A judge in Amsterdam has ordered AI chatbot Grok and platform X to stop generating and distributing explicit deepfake images. The ruling targets so-called ‘undressing’ content and illegal material involving minors.
The case was brought by Offlimits, which argued that safeguards were failing. The Dutch judges found sufficient evidence that harmful images could still be created despite existing restrictions.
The court imposed a penalty of €100,000 per day for violations, with a maximum of €10 million. Access to Grok on X must also be suspended if the system does not comply with the order.
The decision highlights growing legal pressure on AI platforms to control the misuse of generative tools. Regulators and courts are increasingly demanding stronger protections against online abuse and illegal content.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
The programme, titled ‘AI Works for Britain’, seeks to address structural barriers that limit professional mobility despite widespread access to digital tools.
New research indicates that a significant proportion of the population feels unable to advance, citing gaps in skills, confidence and professional networks.
While a majority already use AI tools, only a minority report meaningful productivity gains, suggesting that effective utilisation remains uneven across the workforce.
An initiative by Google that focuses on practical upskilling through public training hubs, university partnerships and community outreach programmes.
These efforts aim to move users beyond basic interaction with AI tools toward more advanced applications that can enhance employability, efficiency and business development.
The programme in the UK aligns with broader efforts to position AI as a driver of economic inclusion rather than a source of inequality, with policymakers and industry stakeholders emphasising the importance of workforce readiness in an increasingly AI-driven economy.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
The government of California is advancing a more interventionist approach to AI governance, signalling a divergence from federal deregulatory preferences.
An executive order signed by Gavin Newsom mandates the development of comprehensive AI policies within 4 months, prioritising public safety and protecting fundamental rights.
The proposed framework requires companies seeking state contracts to demonstrate safeguards against harmful outputs, including the prevention of child exploitation material and violent content.
It also calls for measures addressing algorithmic bias and unlawful discrimination, alongside increased transparency through mechanisms such as watermarking AI-generated media.
The evolving policy landscape reflects growing concern over the societal impact of AI systems, including risks to employment, content integrity and civil liberties.
An initiative by California that may therefore serve as a testing ground for future regulatory models, shaping broader debates on balancing innovation with accountability in digital governance.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
A cybersecurity incident involving CareCloud has exposed vulnerabilities in the protection of sensitive medical information, following unauthorised access to patient records stored within its systems.
A breach was detected on 16 March, allowing attackers to access electronic health records for several hours, which raised concerns about potential data exposure.
The company has stated that the intrusion was contained on the same day, with systems restored and an external investigation launched.
However, uncertainty remains about whether any data were extracted and the scale of the potential impact, particularly given the company’s role in supporting tens of thousands of healthcare providers and millions of patients.
Such an incident reflects broader structural risks within digital healthcare infrastructures, where centralised storage of highly sensitive data increases the potential impact of cyberattacks.
Cloud environments, including services provided by Amazon Web Services, are increasingly integral to such systems, amplifying both efficiency and exposure.
The breach follows a pattern of escalating cyber threats targeting healthcare data, driven by its high value in criminal markets.
As investigations continue, the case underscores the need for stronger data protection measures, enhanced monitoring systems and more robust regulatory oversight to safeguard patient information.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
The European Commission has committed €5 million to strengthen independent fact-checking networks, reinforcing efforts to counter disinformation across Europe. The initiative seeks to expand verification capacity in all EU languages while improving coordination among key stakeholders.
It also establishes a centralised European repository of verified information, designed to enhance transparency and improve access to reliable content across the EU.
Led by the European Fact-Checking Standards Network, the project builds on existing frameworks such as the European Digital Media Observatory. The initiative forms part of the EU’s broader strategy to strengthen information integrity and safeguard democratic processes.
By reinforcing independent verification ecosystems, the programme reflects a policy-driven effort to address disinformation threats while supporting a more resilient and trustworthy digital environment across Europe.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
The US Federal Trade Commission has taken action against OkCupid and Match Group Americas over allegations that the dating app shared users’ personal information, including photos and location data, with an unrelated third party despite privacy promises saying such sharing would not occur without notice or an opportunity to opt out.
According to the FTC’s complaint, OkCupid gave the third party access to personal data from millions of users even though the recipient was not a service provider, business partner, or affiliate within the company’s corporate family. The agency says consumers were not informed and were not given a chance to opt out.
The complaint says the third party sought large OkCupid datasets because OkCupid’s founders were financial investors in that company, despite there being no business relationship with the app. The FTC alleges that OkCupid provided access to nearly 3 million user photos, along with location and other information, without formal or contractual limits on how the data could be used.
Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said: ‘The FTC enforces the privacy promises that companies make. We will investigate, and where appropriate, take action against companies that promise to safeguard your data but fail to follow through—even if that means we have to enforce our Civil Investigative Demands in court.’
The FTC also alleges that, since September 2014, Match and OkCupid have taken extensive steps to conceal and deny that the apps shared users’ personal information with the data recipient, including conduct the agency says obstructed its investigation. One example cited in the complaint is that, after a news report revealed the third party had obtained large OkCupid datasets, the company told the media and users that it was not involved with that third party.
Under the proposed settlement, OkCupid and Match would be permanently prohibited from misrepresenting how they collect, maintain, use, disclose, delete, or protect personal information, including photos, demographic data, and geolocation data. Restrictions would also cover how they describe the purposes of data collection and disclosure, as well as how they present privacy controls and consumer choices under state privacy laws.
The Commission vote authorising staff to file the complaint and stipulating the final order was 2-0. The FTC filed both in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. The agency notes that a complaint reflects its view that it has ‘reason to believe’ the law has been or is about to be violated, while stipulated final orders carry the force of law only if approved and signed by the district court judge.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech, and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
