Facebook’s announcement on Sunday that it plans to hire 10,000 people to “help build the metaverse” in Europe would double the number of people working on all things AR, VR and metaverse-related by 2026. Why commit to a huge hiring spree in Europe? Concerns about how the EU’s more proactive privacy regulations will shape the metaverse surely has something to do with it.

By building out its European workforce, Facebook will be in a better position to lobby governments and the European Commission around privacy and the metaverse more effectively. Facebook notes in its blog post that “European policymakers are leading the way in helping to embed European values like free expression, privacy, transparency and the rights of individuals into the day-to-day workings of the internet.”