Meta CTO Publicly Apologizes To Palmer Luckey As Zuckerberg Praises Him & Demos Orion

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth publicly apologized to Palmer Luckey over comments he made earlier this year about his firing.

If you missed it, back in April, Bosworth publicly argued with Luckey and John Carmack on X over the issue of Luckey's political views in relation to him being fired from Oculus by Facebook back in 2017.

In that argument, Bosworth even called one of Carmack's comments on the issue "woefully incorrect", leading to an intense series of replies from Luckey pointing out the inconsistencies in Bosworth's statements. It also spawned a take from Air Link creator Amanda Watson, who was there at the time, supporting Carmack and Luckey. After being called out, Bosworth eventually fell back to claiming there were "limits on what can be said" in public.

Palmer Luckey & John Carmack Publicly Argue With Meta CTO

Over the weekend, John Carmack and Palmer Luckey publicly argued with Meta’s CTO about Luckey’s 2017 firing.

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Now, six months later, Bosworth posted a statement to X apologizing for those comments, saying he "dug into" these events (he was not involved in Oculus at the time) and discovered that he "was misinformed", though noted "that's no excuse". Here's Bosworth's full statement:

"I'm glad you came by to check out Orion. I mentioned this in person, but I also wanted to publicly apologize for my previous comments about your time at (then) Oculus. I’m sorry. After reading the recent Tablet piece I dug into some of the events that preceded my time when a different set of people who are no longer at the company were running the group. It turns out I was misinformed but that's no excuse and since I wasn't involved I should never have said anything. I'm grateful for the impact you made at the company and in developing VR overall. Looking forward to showing you more of our work in the future."

Less than one hour later, Luckey publicly accepted Bosworth's apology, pointing out that, eight years later, the people responsible for his "ouster and internal/external smear campaign" aren't even at Meta anymore.

Luckey's statement references the Ship of Theseus, a philosophical thought experiment about whether an entity is really the same after all its constituent parts have been replaced one by one over time, in this case Meta's XR division and its decision makers.

In a separate direct reply to Bosworth's apology, Luckey said it was "very rare for someone to demonstrate this sort of character", and "pretty surreal to be back on campus with you guys".

John Carmack, the original target of Bosworth's earlier comments, also praised the apology.

A few days before the apology, Mark Zuckerberg personally invited Palmer Luckey to demo the Orion AR glasses prototype.

In the same direct reply to Bosworth, Luckey said "Orion alone was well worth the trip" and that it's "more or less exactly what I would have wanted to accomplish".

Zuckerberg's invitation comes a month after he gave a statement to Tablet Magazine about Luckey's firing, as part of a feature on Luckey's life and career so far that Bosworth referenced in his apology.

Zuckerberg told the magazine that he has "a huge amount of respect" for Luckey, that he was "fun to work with", and claimed he was "sad when his time at Meta came to an end". He ended by saying he hopes they "can find ways to work together in the future".

Here's Zuckerberg's full statement to Tablet Magazine:

“I have a huge amount of respect for Palmer—both for what he’s done for VR and for now achieving the rare feat of building multiple successful companies,”

“He’s an impressive free-thinker and fun to work with. I was sad when his time at Meta came to an end, but the silver lining is that his work at Anduril is going to be extremely important for our national security. I’m glad an entrepreneur of his caliber is working on these problems. I hope we can find ways to work together in the future.”