I think that's the issue Meta had, they were trying to introduce VR to the greater public. VRs actual community is a niche of individuals who love the technology, they didn't want what Horizon was offering. VRChat is too weird for the average person, but Horizon was not interesting enough for the average person either.
I do believe that the recent Meta headsets pulled in a lot of users who will stay, thanks to their price point and performance.
There was a solution for meta though but they failed to pivot. Almost every generation as a whole disliked VR, except for children. Gen Alpha is into VR, but meta failed to market it as their NES or much better Roblox. Instead, meta marketing stayed focused on disinterested adults. Maybe it was because the children were using their parent’s accounts since it’s apparent that meta’s marketing department didn’t touch their VR devices? Otherwise, they’d realize the horizon and every online VR game was filled with kids.