Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg said privacy and safety need to be built in to the metaverse, as he opened the company's annual virtual and augmented reality conference on Thursday.

Facebook continues to battle criticism over its market power, its content moderation practices and harms linked to its social media platforms.

The metaverse refers broadly to a shared virtual environment which can be accessed by people using different devices. Zuckerberg has increasingly been promoting the idea of Facebook, which has invested heavily in augmented and virtual reality, as a "metaverse" company rather than a social media one.

  - Reuters