Meta spent 20 years earning distrust. Muse may be changing the equation
The rapid adoption of Zuckerberg’s new AI agent comes shortly after Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims over its treatment of young users.
Mark Zuckerberg has surely learned one lesson since launching Facebook 22 years ago: if you move fast enough, become dominant enough, and are willing to push the boundaries far enough, the consequences of your actions may ultimately matter less than the scale of what you have built. You can face accusations of misleading users, violating their privacy, betraying their trust and defying regulators, and still find millions of people willing to embrace your next product.
Over the past two decades, Zuckerberg and Facebook, now Meta, have been at the center of a long list of controversies. They have ranged from the lawsuits brought early on by the Winklevoss twins and co-founder Eduardo Saverin to years of privacy and data scandals, most notably the Cambridge Analytica affair, and more recently, lawsuits alleging that Meta deliberately designed its platforms to encourage addictive use among young people.
Meta has repeatedly faced legal and regulatory challenges while continuing to grow its products and user base. Now, another striking example is emerging: the enthusiastic response to Muse, Meta’s new autonomous AI agent.
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The timing is difficult to ignore. Less than a month ago, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion over a decade to settle claims brought by U.S. states alleging that it harmed young users through the design of its platforms and violated their privacy. The agreement includes changes to how minors use Facebook and Instagram, including a default two-hour daily limit and a “Night Mode” that blocks access between midnight and 6 a.m.
The settlement did not stop investors from embracing Meta. Nor, apparently, did it make users particularly reluctant to embrace its newest product.
Muse has received an overwhelmingly positive response since its launch. Within 10 days, it became the No. 1 free iPhone app in the U.S., overtaking ChatGPT. According to Apptopia, Muse was installed 2.8 million times globally during its first 12 days, exceeding ChatGPT’s early mobile adoption when measured on a comparable basis.
That is remarkable not simply because a new AI application is proving popular. It is remarkable because of what users are being asked to trust Meta with.
Muse competes with AI agents from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, promising to perform tasks on users’ behalf rather than simply answer questions. In doing so, these systems can potentially become far more deeply embedded in people's daily lives than a conventional chatbot.
And Meta is entering that market with an enormous advantage: hundreds of millions of people already use its products, and the company has spent two decades building systems around understanding how those people behave online.
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That makes the contrast with Meta’s recent legal troubles particularly striking.
The allegations surrounding Facebook and Instagram have centered on the way Meta designs its products, the data it collects and the effects of its platforms on young users. The settlement announced last month did not constitute an admission of wrongdoing by Meta, but it did require the company to make significant changes to the way minors use its platforms.
Yet only weeks later, millions of people are voluntarily downloading another Meta product that promises to become much more deeply involved in their lives.
That distinction matters. A social network can learn what users post, who they interact with and what they click. An AI agent designed to act on a user's behalf potentially occupies a much more intimate position. It can be asked to retrieve information, perform tasks and interact with services for its user.
The appeal is obvious. An agent that can take care of mundane tasks is far more useful than a chatbot that merely provides answers. But that usefulness depends on trust, and on giving the system access to increasingly personal information.
This is the wager Meta is now making with Muse: that users who have spent years giving the company their social connections, interests, conversations and behavioral data will also be willing to give its AI increasingly intimate access to their lives.
The early numbers suggest that many are.
The question is what, if anything, the long history of controversies surrounding Meta has taught them about the price of that trust.
