Facebook account now required to login to Oculus devices
oculus.comPalmer Luckey, the original creator had this to say over on /r/oculus:
I am already getting heat from users and media outlets who say this policy change proves I was lying when I consistently said this wouldn't happen, or at least that it was a guarantee I wasn't in a position to make. I want to make clear that those promises were approved by Facebook in that moment and on an ongoing basis, and I really believed it would continue to be the case for a variety of reasons. In hindsight, the downvotes from people with more real-world experience than me were definitely justified.
A few examples below so people won't make up their own version of what I actually said:
- I guarantee that you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift.
- You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift
- Nope. That would be lame.
- I promise.
Exhibit n + 1 on why when you're acquired you're not in a position to promise anything to anyone despite any assurances from the acquirer. Or, from the consumer's side, why those promises should carry no weight.
We see this time and again but ... you SOLD, you're not the captain anymore.
If the new captain doesn't make the promise, you can't give it much weight, and if it is Facebook, probably no weight even if they did :(
Facebook made that promise by approving it on an ongoing basis. They just changed their mind.
Facebook deals in contracts, not promises and even if it was contractually agreed upon, what would you do about it? Sue? At a guess you'd count the money one more time, shrug and maybe send a short apologetic note about how terrible you feel about it. And then count the money again.
My moral compass would get real wobbly if I had (insert some unfathomable number here) in my bank account following an acquisition.
Probably not a great thing to confess to but I doubt I’d find myself caring what my acquirer was doing with their new real estate.
Those who say they can’t be bought are either saints (rare), or have never had a reasonable chance of being offered their price.
Most humans will get very morally flexible once offered enough resources; this is precisely why we have contracts and courts, to create structural systems more capable of upholding agreements than individual humans can do alone.
Or have never been in a situation where their mother, father, or themself has a serious medical condition requiring over $1,000,000 and many years of fighting to treat it. "I can't be bought" is a failure of imagination.
This is either never or very rarely the case in the developed world outside the US.
This is very rarely the case outside the US.
I put the "developed world" declaimer as I figured in some poor countries you wouldn't be able to get good treatment without paying for it but I imagine even then you will not pay as much as in the US.
In Western Europe such things are generally free.
Generally free or not available at all to that specific patient, no? At least from the publicly funded system; some Western European countries also allow private practice of medicine where the availability criteria are different.
If it's a treatment that is required for the patient to survive it will generally be available & free. E.g. getting cancer treatments here will be free & almost certainly expensive in the US (even with insurance they will find something the insurance doesn't cover, and/or will charge you for stuff like ambulance rides).
There may be some rare exceptions where you'd be able to pay a lot of money in the US for some experimental treatment not yet available in the public EU system but this is the exception not the rule. What you possibly won't get for free are non-critical treatments.
I will give one declaimer though that I live in Germany & the healthcare system is not in the same quality/extensiveness throughout the EU (the German system is among the best).
It is a failure of imagination to think that everything can be bought. Many things do not have a monetary equivalent.
Some things cannot be bought. Many things have a monetary equivalent, though.
It's also why we have immutable smart contracts on the blockchain. Can't be evil > don't be evil
Immutability doesn't actually solve much in the way of real-world problems. Most contract lawsuits don't concern accusations of secretly forging altered contracts, or any disparity between copies: they concern interpretations. And if you've ever read a typical boilerplate contract for most any serious transaction, you'll see they cover "if-then" situations about as much as can be reasonably be done.
Explain the mechanism by which a smart contract in this instance would both have made it impossible for Facebook to make this move and, if they did anyway, avoided the necessity of Palmer to sue them over it.
Serious question - how do blockchain contracts enforce real world constraints?
Say I sell you some rope and as part of our contract I say that it shouldn't be used to execute people and you go and use it to hang someone.
How would you even go about expressing that in the world of a blockchain?
How does the blockchain world get to know that you have broken your side of the contract.
How does a blockchain contract enforce penalties for breaking a contract?
This is known as the “oracle problem”; actually getting the correct real world inputs into an immutable smart contract is a serious hurdle to adoption.
If you pay attention to most smart contract pitches, they polite side step this issue.
Blockchain contracts definitely do not somehow preclude "evil", for almost any reasonable definition of evil. They preclude forgery and very specific categories of fraud — but beyond that the sky is the limit.
The problem with block chain is it requires the whole stack be on chain (at least if it is to be referenced in a contract). If that's the case, then you can definitely do this. E.g. a smart contract that represents the login functionality and you can hard-code it has to be some other immutable contract, and can't be changed to FB login.
On second thought, the whole issue is weird because blockchain doesn't have a login concept.
It's auditable, open source, and immutable. It's neutral. Neither good nor evil. It's your responsibility or the community's responsibility to audit the code and assess the risks.
That's great at and all, but I honestly don't understand how that would help in this situation. Unless you write something absurd like "Mark Zuckerberg's stock will be transferred to Palmer Luckey if this promise is broken", which just about no one in Mark's position would agree to, how are you going to actually prevent something like this from happening?
edit: and as ComputerGuru stated - such a clause can just as easily be put into a traditional contract
So is a contract written in legalese English.
Will a blockchain contract block FB from committing the code in the Occulus software that requires to login in Facebook?
I guess it won't, so...
And this is why blockchains will never replace courts.
Humans are still humans.
As would most people, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it. The big mistake is to try to pull the wool over the users' eyes knowing full well he would lose control over that and so was in absolutely no position to promise anything.
If you take GP at face value he didn't intentionally pull the wool over people's eyes. He was just rather naive.
GP has since started a defense contractor. I highly doubt this is a naive person.
That's a non sequitur and your viewpoint is vindictive, uncharitable, and unreasonable.
Palmer Luckey was in his very early 20s and had never been involved in an acquisition before. He acknowledged his mistake and his explanation makes complete sense. Even much more experienced people are prone to making this kind of mistake in the honeymoon period of an acquisition.
No kidding. I'm shocked that all these perfect and wildly successful people even have time to post on hacker news :p
Can you explain the leap from someone starting a defense contractor to them not being naive a few years earlier in their life about corporate acquisitions?
Without commenting on this situation, if you're worried about selling something to a large entity who might later change their mind about how they use your thing, you don't usually start selling to militaries.
Sorry, who's GP?
Grandparent - In this context, that’s Palmer Luckey.
It's probably real easy to tell yourself you'll donate a couple million to charities that try to help with actual horrific things and that's way more important than some people having to use a different account/login system for their new luxury game system.
Who knows, maybe some (small amount) of people in similar positions actually follow through afterwards and do that.
There's (at least) two reasons why they call it "fuck you money"...
There is nothing immoral about a lawful business transaction to purchase a VR company. If this device required some signing of an EULA that has given away all your consumer rights then the onus is on you, no one forced you to buy it and many organisations and individuals have been warning about these business practices unheeded.
As an anecdotal example, many companies are now using instagram for image hosting that pester/ requires me to sign up. I say no thank you and move on, I'm not adversely affected but maybe that company loses some business.
You bought a thing with a certain agreement then the agreement is changed under you . Will they reimburse the buyers? If not, then this is nuts and immoral.
If they do reimburse you, then it's just scary. The fact an unscrupulous entity like Facebook have such a strong hold in people life and business, opinions and privacy is a recipe for an Orwellian future (present?)
Virtual reality is the next frontier of cyberspace, a much more engulfing and immersive (if successful), I don't want Facebook to have so much power.
Did they change the EULA? Do we have the info to make that claim?
Even more interesting is I can remember having many a conversation about which headset to buy, always stating avoid oculus because facebook and yet the person buys oculus anyway only to later complain profusely about having a VR headset from facebook. In recent years this seems to be a problem, likely with current generations. Capitalism fails when you don’t exercise your freedom to make smart purchase decisions. If you don’t want facebook to have so much power stop buying them, stop using them, get your friends and family off and make them actually work for their customers.
I bought a Rift and I knew the risks. I wanted to try it and in case I don't like it, at least I didn't spend too much money compared to competitors. I hate their app, you cannot even uninstall it by conventional means (you have to do it withing the app).
Headsets are not cheap, but I am not really crying for not attaching it to my PC ever again. I just wonder who would want to develop against that environment. Not that there was that much available as it is.
I'm absolving Palmer of making a promise he couldn't keep because of Facebook. Palmer is correct here and shouldn't be getting the blowback that he is.
Obviously Facebook can do what they want within the terms.
I don't know Palmer and until 5 minutes didn't know his name. I don't dislike him, I'm sure he's a nice guy and great person, and I think the product and achievement is impressive. But:
I respect him for eating humble pie now.
I absolutely do not respect yet alone absolve him of not doing so originally. Why would one? There's nothing NEW that came to the table: Facebook can do what they want now, and crucially that was the case at the time of those promises.
Founders literally sign away their right to make these promises. Whether they're made out of ego, faith, hope, naivette, inocence, or just riding that payday high and feeling king of the world - acquired founders need to stop making them and we need to stop believing them; and holding accountable / not absolving is a step in that direction. They're not evil people, they don't need to be doxxed or torched... but it's a certain level of wrong to make promises you absolutely positively cannot deliver upon, and good will does not make such ignorance OK :-/
Sorry if that came harsh; I feel bad for Palmer... but hey, should we not feel worse for those who believed him and acted upon that belief??
> Founders literally sign away their right to make these promises.
Well, they don't have to. He could have insisted on writing this condition into the acquisition contract. But he obviously didn't. The most charitable reading of this is that he was just naive and didn't know that this was an option or that it would be necessary in order to enforce such a promise, but that seems unlikely. Acquiring this knowledge is no harder than posing the question to his M&A attorney. Hence...
> I absolutely do not t respect yet alone absolve him of not doing so originally. Why would one?
I think you made the right call here.
I wonder if it's possible to make such a contract that works? If it curtails Facebook, and they breach the contract, then what? They pay the seller some more money?
If you reverted ownership there's no way that FB are going to sign that contract (a small risk you could inadvertently lose the asset and the cost price, eg through an unforeseen loophole that favours the seller - lawyers should veto such things, surely).
Also, are you going to make it a perpetual term applied to all future owners? If not then FB can probably make an entity to sell it to. Or use a third-party login that itself requires Facebook login and workaround your selling constraints.
I like the idea of it: just practically I can't see how it would be workable to technically constrain a company in a contract of sale of that company.
Are there examples of where this has been done successfully?
> I wonder if it's possible to make such a contract that works?
Yes. In short, you expressly identify in the contract that the provision is for the benefit of Oculus Rift users, and then they gain the power to enforce it as “intended third-party beneficiaries”.
Thank you. Any examples of this in the field of computing, where users were made party to the contract of sale of a company in order to protect some aspect of their usage?
The examples I can find [there] don't seem to bear much similarity to this situation at all.
IANAL but my guess is that you could structure it in such a way that every user affected by the breach had standing to sue for some specified amount of damages so that collectively it would have been worth some lawyer's time to take the case on contingency.
It's entirely possible that FB would have balked, but that in itself would have been a useful data point that indicated that they had every intention of bundling the two products together.
In any case, the topic at hand is not so much whether such a deal could have been structured to work, but whether there are any circumstances short of willful ignorance where the founder could have made the promise he did in good faith. I don't see any.
Naivety seems to account for making such a promise, the idea that others have similarly honourable intentions to oneself can persist and cause such errors of judgement.
Harshing on Palmer might feel like the right thing for folks, but they should be harshing on Facebook right now. Palmer has little to no agency and by focusing on the scapegoat, we ignore the avenues for change that are available right now.
Ultimately, energy spent on Palmer distracts from getting Facebook to modify its behavior.
I agree. Ultimately it was Facebooks decision to enact this policy. Why do people gravitate towards blaming him ? Is it just because they feel he’s lied to them and should be held accountable even though he may have only been naive ?
Its funny how in situations like this one, where one person facilitates another’s wrongdoing, they (Palmer) are put under the spotlight more so than the bad actor (Facebook)
They got him to admit he was wrong. That's more satisfaction than they'll get from Facebook.
Well, to a cynical person facebook is a user privacy wood chipper.
You don't throw something into a wood chipper then get mad at the wood chipper for chopping it up - that's just what it does.
(Of course it's easy for me to say, I haven't spent $$$ on Oculus products)
>> Why do people gravitate towards blaming him ?
It is entirely possible that some consumers, if not some developers / investors / etc, made choices and decisions based on those unequivocal claims.
> Ultimately, energy spent on Palmer distracts from getting Facebook to modify its behavior.
This a thousand times. I wonder however what people like me can do from the outside, save for keep refusing to open a Facebook account.
> they should be harshing on Facebook right now.
“Do not anthropomorphize the lawnmower”.
That's to a certain degree fair; to a certain degree missing the point:
1. It's NOT binary; I generally try not to partake of "You're either with us or against us". We can hold multiple parties accountable, we can be objective about facts, and we can learn multiple lessons.
2. I'm not actually certain there's behaviour for Facebook to modify. They're a corporation with a wildly successful massive SSO program. They've acquired another smaller corporation. Integrating into the mothership SSO feels the right sensible choice from many perspectives. As an annoying privacy conscious geek, sure, I don't love Facebook integration. But this is a reasonable perspective from point of the corporation.
3. Which brings me back to - I still think the truest lesson learned is for all of us naive enough that for whatever unicorn reason, this wouldn't happen. At that includes shareholders, consumers, and the wild-eyed founders making promises :)
As I said, I don't know him, don't intend to bug him, doesn't bother me much, don't intend to "Harsh" on him. But he did have agency, and he did make some claims, and we should all learn some lessons on how to exercise agency and how to make/believe promises.
You are missing an important they in the list of why these empty promises are made: keeping up the value of the property. There's an implicit, and often also an explicit (e.g. in the form of the founder becoming an employee) agreement that the seller won't talk down the value of what they just sold. Claiming that all will be well, despite Facebook, was very much in the interest of Facebook. Including the fact that the promise was made by someone who'd most likely be gone before the promise stopped being true.
> I'm sure he's a nice guy and great person
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15366500/palmer-luckey-tr...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/how-your-oculus-...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/palmer-luckey-aundur...
Does that change your opinion?
> acquired founders need to stop making them and we need to stop believing them
Not just acquired founders. In my opinion we should stop so readily believing in promises by founders, start ups, corporations, celebrities, politicians, etc. unless there is a strong track record keeping them and/or other reasons to believe the promise can and will be kept.
Getting people to (pre-/re-)purchase something should require to build up trust, not just grand visions and good marketing.
What are some examples of evil people that
> need to be doxxed or torched...
?
I completely agree with your assessment, except... Palmer was a kid and they just made him a multimillionaire. There’s no way he was in a headspace to rationally evaluate anything, let alone evaluate the long term weaseliness of a large corporation.
Zuck is still a kid. The corporate weaseliness starts at the top.
Yeah but he has entire teams of full-grown weasels with decades of weaselly experience each.
1. I feel that was addressed in my post as one of the potential reasons he made the claims
2. Read Ender's game or Dune or live through a civil war as a child or... whatever it takes to agree that a 22 year old can and should be regarded as a responsible, accountable human being. Otherwise really who can?
Multimillionaires don't deserve our pity for their lies. They can comfort themselves on their piles of money (whatever is remaining after the amount spent promoting the corruption of the USA government as Mr Luckey did).
He knew it was a promise he could not keep because he was giving up control. You simply can not make promises like that it is beyond stupid to make promises about how a company will be run in the future when you are no longer at the helm.
He should have known he couldn't promise that. He could not have known Facebook would do what they did but he should have been at least smart enough to know the limits of his own influence.
it really seems a little willfully naive. if it's not in a contract, obviously any promise facebook makes is going to be on an "isn't inconvenient to do" basis
He was 22 years old when Facebook bought Oculus. I assume he expected to stay a part of it and maybe things were different if he did. It's his fault, of course, but I think he was just naive.
> I assume he expected to stay a part of it and maybe things were different if he did. It's his fault, of course, but I think he was just naive.
You can be naive, but naive doesn't mean you go online and argue that people who know better are wrong, which is what he did.
The definition of naivety means he didn't know any better. He simply backed up what he believed, which I would expect.
Now he knows better. He has changed his mind. Which is what any rational person should do when presented with new information.
On the one hand I won't vilify him.
On the other hand he merely met the base requirements for "rational thinking" - so I am not about to give him any accolades.
> You can be naive, but naive doesn't mean you go online and argue that people who know better are wrong, which is what he did.
Isn't this exactly what being naive means?
No, naive is closer to absentmindedness or just not having been exposed to something.
Palmer was suffering from confident ignorance.
> Palmer is correct here and shouldn't be getting the blowback that he is.
This sentence seems self-contradictory. Once again, here's what Palmer said:
> I really believed it would continue to be the case for a variety of reasons. In hindsight, the downvotes from people with more real-world experience than me were definitely justified.
It sounds like he's agreeing that he should be getting the blowback, right? He made a promise he couldn't keep, people told him he wouldn't be able to keep it, he ignored them. He should have known better.
Is he the one to blame? No.
Does he deserve the blowback? Probably not.
Was it an extremely naive promise to make given historical experience and the company that acquired you? Absolutely.
Unless he put the promise in the sell contract, in which case he can sue Facebook and stop them from doing this nasty move, he should be getting all the blowback he's getting and more.
Even if it is in the contract the court would not necessarily side with you unless you can show that you were somehow wronged because of this. "They made me look bad" may not be sufficient.
IANAL but I don't think that's the test. If a person commits to not doing something as part of a valid contract that's all that matters.
The point you make may be relevant for deciding damages, but even here there is a concept of Liquidated Damages [0] which is essentially the damages amount set at day 1 so the question of ascertaining the extent of wrong does not arise.
> IANAL but I don't think that's the test. If a person commits to not doing something as part of a valid contract that's all that matters.
A contract is a matter for civil law. Breaking a term of a contract doesn't automatically mean that a court will consider a remedy.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)#Standing_requir...: in the US, "the plaintiff must have suffered or imminently will suffer injury".
As this very thread has made clear, Palmer Luckey's reputation has been damaged by Facebook's choice to renege on their statements regarding requiring a Facebook login. That's an injury. If it had been part of the contract he would absolutely be in a position to enforce it in court. It was NOT in the contract.
The great-great-grandparent post from this one (by jacquesm) already raised your point and doubted that it is enough. I'm not claiming an opinion on whether this claimed reputational damage qualifies as an injury.
I'm just saying that an injury is required in principle (with an appropriate citation), because the great-grandparent (by vijayr02) didn't think that was the case.
If he got it just verbally then I can't see him having a case, they can claim they didn't say it and that will be hard to prove, it might still work but that's very thin ice.
If he got it written into the contract then it is clear that he does not intend to pursue it.
If it was written into the contract and he pursues it then he will need to show that he has suffered because the contract was not executed and I fail to see how he could make that case and do so with enough teeth that it would matter to FB enough to reverse course.
As someone who used to practice law, any discussion about contractual obligations is nothing more than speculation until you have read the specific contract in question.
The "Common Law" section of your link explains why liquidated damages are often not enforceable.
IANAL so would definitely appreciate someone with more background correcting me - my understanding from lawyers is that the test is of disproportionality and penalty.
The example of UK bank overdraft charges in the Wikipedia article for instance can be seen as small powerless individuals vs large corporate.
In the Oculus case, a good lawyer should have been able to set out in the contract why this specific point is important to the seller (Palmer) and why significant damages are in order (damages credibility on future projects, which clearly could be multi-billion in scope).
If I make a lot of money in a way that has negative consequences for other people, then it’s human nature to find ways to discount the negative impact. You delude yourself to feel better so you can take the money and run. Not sure I’d be any different, although I like to think I would be.
Palmer made the promise knowing full well he would pull a "See, not in my hands, I can't do anything". It's all just a PR move.
Promissory estoppel is a real thing and companies can be legally liable for promises that another party relies upon.
>Facebook deals in contracts, not promises and even if it was contractually agreed upon, what would you do about it? Sue?
Why shouldn't we expect more from companies? Promises should mean something. But really this is just another example of facebook undermining the basic fabric of society for its own gain.
"ongoing basis" - that's an oxymoron lmao. If your base is going somewhere then it's not really a base.
It was true until it wasn't.
Was it just a verbal agreement or written in the contract though.
The one time facebook did that in a written way was with whatsapp and it made them lose in europe (germany specifically I think) where they had to cancel their plan to share data between the two entities.
Facebook executives openly lied to the European Commission, to get approval for the acquisition. 3 years later they were fined $120M, a slap on the wrist [1].
No wonder they keep making empty promises.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
Immaterial.
If that promise wasn't in the actual contract then it wasn't "Facebook" who made it, it was someone at Facebook. Individual employees aren't typically in a position to be making those types of promises anymore than the company being acquired is.
So, let's assume it was in the actual contract. What is he going to do about it? Sue? Annul the deal?
No? Than it doesn't matter. The whole idea that because something is written into a contract that that automatically means that that his how things will be in the indefinite future is an illusion, and I've seen plenty of people burned that way. A contract only matters if (1) you are prepared to sue over it and (2) you will know what kind of remedy you want if you win the suit.
In this case the state of (1) is 'no' and the state of (2) doesn't matter because of (1).
"In this case" there is no provision in the contract which says Facebook needs to keep Oculus accounts separate, so there's nothing to sue over. If that provision were in the contract, then yes I'd expect a lawsuit. Or at least some form of arbitration or settlement. Ideally the contract itself would specify what happens if that condition is violated.
I don't think that is legally feasible but I don't have enough experience in this. He sold the company, aka shares. The contract should determine how the sale happen but afterward, it's afterward.
A contract needs to be legal, and legal means what the law allows in the context. Does the law allow putting such provisions? I've been burnt by this in a rental agreement. Think about it this way: if we have a contract between both of us, where you agree that I'm going to kill you, I'm still going to jail. Having a contract doesn't make killing legal. This also applies to the rest of contracts. The provisions need to respect the law.
But the guy didn't have a contract, sold a patent-heavy company for $3bn (probably an army of lawyers involved) that netted him around $700mn. I'd just call this saving face.
At best an attempt at saving face.
Why the focus on what he would do? The promises were made to Oculus's current and potential customers. That's who would sue and it's fairly clear that they would want money... e.g. to go buy a HTC Vive.
I've upvoted you, since you are correct. I was absolutely amazed that you had been downvoted.
I suspect they do a lot to make you think you are the captain though to help get you to sell.
They usually follow through for some amount of time. This is because it takes time to figure out how they are going to absorb you. If they changed everything on day 1 it would be a cluster fuck. A simple example would be if Orcl bought a company that was 100% on SAP for financials. If all your SAP people walk out the door the first week how are you going to file the next quarter financials. So they claim that nothing is going to change and that the SAP people have nothing to worry about.
And I bet some nice fat clause in the contract that prevents him from creating a new (and even better) VR headset?
Probably for some time
Yes
One could theoretically put it in a contract, but I doubt anyone would risk the sale over this kind of detail.
Money talks.
I mean, this is really a condemnation of any data privacy practices whatsoever claimed by any company, as they may at any point in the future sell the entire company and databases with it.
The only privacy claims one may wish to take seriously are those that occur simultaneously with promises never to sell the company.
I used to use a location tracking app called Moves, which was a neat 24/7 location tracking lifelogging tool. Facebook, the very last people I would like to have that data, bought them, and presumably integrated it into my shadow profile.
Special thanks go to to the founders of Moves: Zsolt Szász, Jukka Partanen, Juho Pennanen, Aapo Kyrölä, and Aleksi Aaltonen. Hope you got paid selling private data that belongs to the users that entrusted it to you.
And, in my opinion, that is exactly the position you SHOULD take. Stop giving up your data to any company. Even if your favorite company is nice now, they'll get hacked, they'll get sold, the CEO will get replaced, etc. There is no cloud, just someone else's computer.
> I mean, this is really a condemnation of any data privacy practices whatsoever claimed by any company, as they may at any point in the future sell the entire company and databases with it.
Yes! That's why you should be very very careful who you give your data because you are exactly one acquisition away from the same effect as a breach. Fortunately the GDPR affords some protection here, if the data was collected for one purpose it can not suddenly be used for another.
As for never selling the company: there is one other option: you could give users the option to destroy their data just prior to the transfer. Of course no acquirer would be interested but that is another way of dealing with it.
I put in our privacy policy that customers will be notified if majority ownership changes, but had not considered advance notification of the ownership change.
Such a clause might work as long as it's part of the sale contract to adjust the sale price if any customers take that option.
Good luck enforcing GDPR against any of the malign actors you should most wish to enforce GDPR against
Facebook and everything associated with it is doing everything they can to be and remain GDPR compliant.
Facebook has already been fined under the GDPR so it looks like that enforcement is working.
… What? No, they aren't. https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ Clearly less than "everything they can".
Did he complain to the local DPA?
If not that's an excellent example and it may lead to FB being held to account.
DPA's typically do not go on fishing expeditions, you have to alert them.
I Googled around, and I cannot find any significant fines Facebook has faced for violating GDPR. The enforcement tracker you yourself linked (https://www.enforcementtracker.com/) only has one irrelevant entry for Facebook, and this feed (http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/GDPR-2020-Where-C...) which was last updated just this August says litigation is pending.
If you have any sources for this fine, please post them.
I split my comment into two parts, since this one is more my personal opinion, and I don't want it to colour an otherwise straightforward request for sources.
From noyb's fight against Facebook (https://noyb.eu/en/open-letter), to me it is very clear that Facebook does not intend to comply with GDPR. They are actively trying to find loopholes, and according to noyd, also working with the Irish DPO to find and exploit loopholes. It is also worth noting that the total fines Google has faced from GDPR enforcement come to just under EUR 58 Mn (http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/GDPR-2020-Where-C...). 58 Mn is chump change compared to Google's total revenue, and unless the threat of the full 4% turnover fine becomes credible, I doubt it will lead to any better action.
Wait, wait, wait a minute. In the same comment, you are claiming that Facebook is GDPR compliant, and that Facebook was fined for violating the GDPR. It sure seems like there is a major contradiction between those two.
Errm. No. In the same comment I am claiming that Facebook has already received a warning fine and that thus they stand to lose a lot if they are found to be in violation. I am not saying they are GDPR compliant because I can not know that with 100% certainty, but I'm sure they are doing what they can to not cross that line knowingly.
Facebook, Google, Apple & Microsoft are arguably the companies that stand the most to lose from GDPR enforcement, you can bet that they are well aware of this.
They're trying to stay fine free while also violating the spirit of GDPR as much as possible, since their business hinges on irresponsible and invasive data gathering.
Facebook is not GDPR compliant at all. The only reason they appear to be is that there is no enforcement of this regulation so nobody is actually looking at what they're doing.
There is plenty of enforcement of this regulation:
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
Facebook has already been fined, and if they cross the line again they will be fined again, and quite possibly much higher.
If you know for a fact that Facebook is in some way or other currently not GDPR compliant then I would invite you to contact your local DPA.
There's no mention of any enforcement against Facebook on that website, except for one by the German DPC of EUR 51,000 for failing to notify them about their DPO.
> any data privacy practices whatsoever
Nitpick: Rather, it's a condemnation of any data privacy claims; a data privacy practice is a technical measure that (by design if not in reality) makes it literally impossible for the attacker to collect private information in the first place. Nothing else actually provides security in practice.
The only truly private data practice is not keeping any.
The only winning move is not to play
I want to agree with you, really.. but the realistic person in me says that it is likely that if you don’t keep the data, someone else will find a way, because getting the data seems to be irresistible as a form of control and advantage.
So maybe not playing doesn’t really work.
I was thinking, in regards to some grandparent way up there, the same statement “don’t play” might have been true for Oculus in general.
What I mean to say is, don’t sell the company, ever. Then you can “control the outcome”.
Ah, but there lies another fallacy. You really can’t control the outcome even if you try to. Even if you don’t play, likely someone who wants to do the same thing as you, and exploit it, will find a way. Or maybe on their own, Oculus would have never found the right supporter who would honor privacy. Even if they had.. the below could happen.
For example, if Facebook hadn’t bought Oculus, maybe they would have bought the Vive product line from HTC (a bit far fetched) and compete against Oculus.. and then done the same privacy intruding measures.
So even if Oculus had held out and didn’t “play”, they might have been crushed anyway or the privacy problem could have just happened somewhere else.
I’m not saying we should give up trying to protect privacy and “play” the game... but that somehow in the competitive environment we are in, those playing the game are winning more over those who wish not to.
I agree that this is a major issue and the macroeconomic forces at play here are forcing many peoples' hands.
That said, maybe you should google the phrase "The only winning move is not to play". It's a movie quote ;-)
How could I have forgotten. An excellent reference, well done :)
Shall we play a game?
I mean, this is really a condemnation of any data privacy practices whatsoever claimed by any company, as they may at any point in the future sell the entire company and databases with it.
unless they have clear penalties for themselves in their EULA, and no clause that says they can change anything they want at any time. So yeah I guess you're right.
> I used to use a location tracking app called Moves
Same. Nothing since has managed the same usefulness (although I suspect this is because iOS has somewhat neutered tracking apps - e.g. both OwnTracks and Gyroscope have significant issues tracking my phone.)
Have you tried arc?
No but I will now, thanks!
[edit, 23 minutes later]: Initial impressions were good but it's "detected" 4 segments of car movement when my phone hasn't moved a single inch. Same kind of issues that Gyroscope has, alas.
just a nit: Facebook does not collect "shadow profiles".
Facebook does collect shadow profiles, despite its denials.
https://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-a...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/anger-mounts-after-facebooks-s...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-...
https://www.cnet.com/news/shadow-profiles-facebook-has-infor...
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-profiles-h...
The House Committee interview in the last link (TechCrunch) shows that Zuckerberg does not like to use the "shadow profiles" term, but it's what others use to refer to Facebook's tracking of non-users.
I work there. If "shadow profile" means a profile that's created from PII for a specific person that doesn't have an account on the site, fb doesn't create shadow profiles.
>I work there
An adage about difficulty trying to convince someone whose salary depends on their not being convinced comes to mind...
Then how did FB display a lot of info about me, and recommended me all my contact list as friend recommendations when I created an account after not having one for 10+ years?
It's OK to wish to defend your company, but please do not lie; nobody forced you to comment here.
That you are that specific about P2 very clearly tells me that Facebook actually does create shadow profiles. I believe you that P2 isn't the basis of such profiles.
It's PII, personally identifiable information, not "P2".
One can demand such promises from the acquirer in the form of a contract that states, in effect, this:
a) If acquirer does X, the seller, Y, has the option to repurchase the company for $1. b) Any future acquirer must agree to the same contract. If it does not, Y must be extended the option to repurchase the company for $1 before the sale.
I don't think anything less could constitute a true promise that the acquirer would avoid X.
Contracts are only binding up to a certain amount of capital. You can only make the violator bleed so much.... i don't see contracts as threats to any of these large corporations.
That's trivial to get around. X can dump liabilities into the company, and Y would never reacquire it.
And that is trivial to get around, instead of a $1 clawback for the company, a $1 clawback for all acquired IP, trademarks, etc including any related developed under the same or derivative marks and companies.
That's closer to what I've done, but in practice that also lowers the value of the company. There is a sweet spot you have to hit of giving up control. Just because you ask for something doesn't mean you will get it. In fact, you normally don't have the advantage in these types of sales, so you don't get to specify these things.
> In fact, you normally don't have the advantage in these types of sales, so you don't get to specify these things.
You could always so no and just continue running your company?
Even if you really do want to get out, you can probably get in some conditions if you are willing to reduce the price.
That's what I would assume at least
The issue is that the transaction and the outlooks are asymmetric. The purchaser is often playing a longer game than the seller, so the seller doesn't often have the luxury you mention - given the constraints of the types of companies involved in such transactions.
Consider the board on which you have posted - Often, the purchaser is acting over a greater time frame, and the seller has an immediate need. Competitors are at your heels, and you can't realistically enforce patents against the purchaser or competitors, while retaining the market agility that is required.
In theory, yes, but good luck finding a human on this planet who will turn down $2 Billion.
I remember the original reddit posts before their crowd funding on how they were going to be open hardware.
Then open firmware.
Then support Linux.
Then ...
The same thing applies to the gullible idealists that believe in B-Corporations
Can you unpack that a bit?
If you stop smoking you'll feel better but it's not going to do anything to reduce smoking in the world overall. The only thing that can reduce smoking is the law: taxes, restrictions on where smoking is permitted, and so on.
You should still stop smoking (for your own good) but that alone won't change the world.
It does reduce smoking by one smoker.
A statistically insignificant reduction to the world population of smokers. Without laws to prevent tobacco marketing to minors, the cigarette industry could add 100x as many customers in a day.
Anything you do is statistically insignificant when compared to the world's population.
But if one person in an average household quits that is a 25% reduction.
In the end that person and those around benefit.
There are 4 smokers in an average household?!
You're restating a point I already made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24203338
You should still stop smoking (for your own good)
Not for that smoker. They'll (statistically) live longer.
You're restating a point I already made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24203338
You should still stop smoking (for your own good)
so does someone dying from lung cancer caused by a lifetime of smoking. tears in the rain
That makes sense but the same argument could apply to voting....
It does. If you really want something to change in the government, voting is pretty close to the bottom of the list of things you can do that might make a difference, statistically speaking. You still might as well vote, of course, but the chances of your one vote making an impact are extremely low.
That said, influencing the votes of other people can make a huge difference.
This has been my theory on why in some countries the extreme-right is doing very well (Belgium for example, with Vlaams Belang and NVA). These parties seem to understand that one vote doesn't change much in the grand scheme of things and that the key is to be able to convince a mass amount of voters at the same time. Hence why they are playing the modern media game and spending massive amounts of money into social media campaigns to reach a maximum amount of people. While other parties are not doing that (because they don't realize the game that is being played?) and it shows in election results.
"influencing the votes of other people" should probably be illegal, given the discussion about alledged mass manipulations on U.S. elections.
I consider that to be part of the point of voting. If everyone's opinion on societal matter produces a statistically significant effect, there will be endless turmoil.
That is true. And yet there aren't many good alternatives to voting if we want a free society.
This is one of the reasons why you have to lower the cost of voting as much as possible - in terms of time, money, and hassle - if you want broader participation.
I personally think politicians first and foremost need to try and restore trust in them by the people. I think the biggest reason for people to not vote these days is that they have already heard and seen confirmation for far too many lies. I used to go to every single election. Not anymore. It feels like a waste of my time. Not because the process is so complicated. No. It is a waste because we get lied to constantly anyway.
Don't underestimate the network effect that one person may have by quitting. By sharing their story with others on how they quit, it may inspire others to quit, and so on.
I'm pretty sure there is at least one MLM aka pyramid scheme that is bragging about being a B-Corp which they use to try and ensnare new victims. That's all you need to know to understand that the "B" in B-Corp stands for bullshit and steer well clear of any that explicitly brag about that status (if your business truly acts in a manner that makes the world better you wouldn't need to buy a bullshit certification to prove it).
I assumed that the B in b-corp stands for bullshit, but I checked. And the explanation is bullshit (label given to some companies which claim to care about stuff that matters), so unfortunately I was right and so was vmception: you can't believe in stuff because it's certified.
+1 - what's wrong with b-corps and what's better?
Winner’s Take All by Anand Giridharadas has a few chapters dedicated to B-corps. The issue isn’t that the b-corps themselves are bad, but that relying on a few good companies to fix the problems in the world isn’t going to work, because the bad actors will always more than make up for it.
Taking climate change as an example: 100 b-corps going carbon-neutral aren't going to offset the damage Exxon causes to the environment.
You can say we just need to wait until consumers change their behavior and let the market sort it out, but isn’t that exactly what we’ve been trying and failing to do? At this rate it’s all but certain that climate change won’t be solved via market solutions.
What’s better is forcing the bad actors to stop doing bad. Fighting to pass a carbon tax regulation or a green new deal is what we need, and bandaids like b-corps are often a distraction that tricks people into thinking we can consume our way out of the problem.
Sure but during the decades it will take to make generational change, why not support a B-Corp over one that hasn't made similar promises?
You are talking as if this is an either/or proposition. No, B-Corps won't solve our problems but if it moves the needle even a little, that's still a good thing, right?
I disagree that gaining support for and enacting a carbon tax would take decades. It won’t be easy, and maybe isn’t probable, but a mass movement could make it happen.
To your other point about private solutions being good because they move the needle a little:
In my personal life I shop sustainably (but I’m not perfect or obsessive about it). I do think it’s a little better as a consumer to make ethical choices than not to.
But: the rhetoric around climate change as something individual choices will fix is extremely dangerous. If you ask your average person about what we can do to fix climate change, I’d guess most would go straight to market solutions. Why is that? Could it be because that’s what the entire marketing and media establishment wants us to focus on, because a collective solution will cost them a shit-ton of money?
Yes in a different world it’s not either or and we’d have individual and collective solutions working together to save the planet. In this world, however, the powerful have a vested interest in market-based solutions being the only options on the table.
Basically, yes I agree that ethical companies are better than unethical companies. But on a macro level, propaganda around ethical consumption is so dangerous imo that I’m not interested in contributing to it just to move the needle an imperceptible amount.
Fighting to pass a carbon tax or green new deal is even less impactful than supporting b corps since those things will never get support from the corrupt political class rolling in what are essentially oil dollars.
That might be true! But there are many people working to unbalance that power dynamic as well.
It’s definitely not a guarantee, but mass movements can force change. Look at Bernie, he came pretty damn close to the nomination even with the entire upper class and media throwing their weight behind his opponents.
B Corporations do not have a legal status like a Benefit Corporation (or C or S corp), it's just a certification you buy.
which changes nothing either way if they were a Benefit Corporation.
Basically people use B-Corps and similar concepts to make other people that are uncomfortable and skeptical of general capitalism feel comfortable by pretending there are safeguards built into the corporate structure preventing whatever they are uncomfortable with.
Charters can easily change, anything can be reincorporated at whim anywhere.
Also its typically just Shariah-Compliant investing rebranded for an Islamaphobic audience. S&P has a shariah index right across the border in Toronto Stock Exchanfe since forever while similar enterprisers push B-Corps and Public Benefit Corporations domestically as if they’ve “figured out” the code to sustainable for profit ventures through charter. Shariah in this context is very compatible with what these kind of investors and consumers are looking for, but they don't know it as they probably conflate it with human rights abuses.
People are just gullible, hope I unpacked that enough.
I see exactly one merit in B-corporations: the status makes it legal for management to to decide in favor of conscience over greed. It doesn't force them to decide conscience over greed, they can be just as profit-oriented as a regular corporation, but they can. At least management won't be sued by shareholders for rejecting a an unethical but legal profit opportunity. It's not the big difference some may expect, but it can be an important difference nonetheless (just like it can be no difference at all)
It hasn't not been legal for a while.
https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_...
"Third, corporate directors are not required to maximize shareholder value. As the U.S. Supreme Court recently stated, "modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so." ( BURWELL v. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC. ) In nearly all legal jurisdictions, disinterested and informed directors have the discretion to act in what they believe to be the interest of the business corporate entity, even if this differs from maximizing profits for present shareholders. Usually maximizing shareholder value is not a legal obligation, but the product of the pressure that activist shareholders, stock-based compensation schemes and financial markets impose on corporate directors. The Shareholder Value Myth , Eur. Fin. Rev. Lynn Stout (April 30, 2013) The Ideology of Shareholder Value Maxim (Watch), Evonomics"
AFAIK, modern corporate law never required that, and the Supreme Court was affirming the existing state of things. The "Shareholder Theory" stems from an essay Milton Friedman published in 1970 asserting that corporations have no responsibility to do anything other than maximize shareholder value, but this was never enshrined in law or financial regulation -- it was just something a lot of corporations followed. It seems in the intervening decades it's become such an accepted "truth" that people assume that it's a legal requirement.
Yup and it was then largely popularized by Jack Welch former CEO of GE who is/was responsible for a lot of modern execs views on the matter.
There has never been a legal requirement for corporations to maximize profit. This is one of the greatest misconceptions propagated in the past 40 years.
A company's management has to act in the interest of shareholders, but that can be very loosely defined. A company that says "When making business decisions, we prefer protecting the environment over short-term profits, because our shareholders are humans living on Earth and without a good environment, our business would fail in the long-term" is not doing anything illegal. But if other companies don't follow suit, the eco-conscious company is in danger of being outcompeted.
> Exhibit n + 1 on why when you're acquired you're not in a position to promise anything to anyone despite any assurances from the acquirer.
You are in a position to promise something where you have contractually retained control, or at least contractually secured an enforceable promise from the purchaser.
Otherwise, you are in the same position as Joe on the street.
unless you flex your cryptoanarchist power and enshrine strong encryption into your architecture. what WhatsApp did. make it costly for the new owner to change their minds.
They still managed, though. Facebook has the technical ability to just walk around all of your encryption.
not past conversations thanks to forward secrecy
Except they control the app that shows you those conversations. Unless you deleted them, they have the technical ability to see them.
Exactly. Literally nothing stops them from pushing an update that uses your device to decrypt your history and send it back to facebook.
Surely you can't be using WhatsApp as an example of strong encryption.... that app is hardly auditable.
We were in talks with a potential acquirer of our company recently and this was an explicit reason we gave to them why we ended up not taking the deal – we knew that whatever promises they made to uphold our current priorities, there is a very real chance they wouldn't stick. And we weren't happy doing that to our customers in our current stage (all early adopters).
He had as much authority as anyone else to make the promise. Consumers shouldn't have believed it from anyone.
This is why I was quite sad when IBM announced that RedHat would be continuing with “business as usual” ...
It's also why all of the smart cookies have already left; anyone still there is waiting for a payday or waiting for a VP title. IBM don't pay quality. They pay market share.
It took 2.5 years for IBM to begin the process of gutting the consultancy they bought, for RedHat I think it'll probably take twice as long.
It's possible to get assurances but you must write them down in the form of legal agreements.
Getting "company assurance at the highest level" is just as good as is the word of the person at the highest level. There are people for whom their word is their bond, but it's not very common.
Just curious to understand what does Exhibit n + 1 mean? Would you kindly explain?
He probably means that something with similar implications has happened a lot of times already and we should have already learned the lesson
"exhibit" is "example". "n" examples occured before, the "1" is this new one. Hence we have "n + 1" examples already, and the newest one can be called "exhibit n + 1".
is it such a big deal to create a fb account though? Can't you just use a fake name if you don't care about having a fb account?
Last I tried (1-3yrs ago? don't quite remember), no. They needed a phone number, so I added a VOIP phone number and was informed that I needed a phone number tied to a real phone. I went out and bought a cheap phone so I could make the bloody account, and while I could make and receive calls just fine Facebook still treated it as if it weren't a "real" phone. Long story short, I never made that account, I briefly enjoyed the perks of a burner phone, and I turned the phone into a small web server.
You can get IDless SIM cards overseas still. E.g. Colombia.
They probably don't have the infra set up (yet) to detect they are such SIM cards.
Given how pervasive Facebook tracking is, I'd bet on your pseudonymous account being linked to your shadow profile very quickly. There is no anonymity when Facebook is involved.
I'd also strongly object to moving the needle even the tiniest amount on Facebook's metrics. They wouldn't force users to do this unless it benefitted them; that's plenty enough reason for a lot of people.
Especially considering that VR devices film your whole room constantly, I think I will never connect my Rift again.
In short, no. Facebook has gotten very good at catching and deleting "fake" accounts. Back in the day, I worked on an application that used Facebook's Graph API and I needed to create some bogus accounts for testing, but they were consistently blocked within days.
Using some combination of behaviour analysis, flagging new and/or cookie-less browsers, and (I suspect) human review FB have gone to great lengths to try and assure their customers that all humans have one and only one account under their true legal name and biographical details.
That might be what they tell investors but I disagree that they've gotten good at policing accounts. I moderate a large Facebook group and we get flooded with join requests from obviously fake users all the time. Most of them have a handful of southeast Asia friends, some random highly geographically distributed friends in the English speaking world, and stock or stolen photos. The real giveaway is the programmatic nonsense responses they give to the membership questions. I've been reporting these accounts to Facebook a long time and they persist, often with join dates making them multiple years old.
> Using some combination of behaviour analysis, flagging new and/or cookie-less browsers, and (I suspect) human review FB have gone to great lengths to try and assure their customers that all humans have one and only one account under their true legal name and biographical details.
They're not very good at that. A pretty big chunk of people I have as friends have fake names, some of them even after me reporting their names for being fake.
Real names don't matter to social networks. You are you because your behavior is your behavior no matter what the attached label is, and no one bothers to change that for a “fake” account. However, real names are great at keeping the naive crowds deluded about social networks being tools for “personal” communications with “real” “friends”.
> me reporting their names for being fake
So how does it feel to be in a punitive squad? Do they at least pay you well for all the atrocities?
Why did you report them?
It's somewhat annoying when people on FB are unrecognizable due to name/profile picture changes. I don't especially like FB in general, and would consider it a positive if FB enforcing their T&C caused people to leave the platform. (Or if it forced a change in the T&C.) The people I've reported are aware of my feelings.
fwiw, facebook has gotten upset with me when i've tried this exact thing, usually demanding a phone number or email, and refusing contact info i've already provided for other sock accounts. sometimes they'll lock my socks for not acting "human" (never posting anything, no profile picture, etc). just gives me an excuse to care less about facebook in all honesty
As a CEO of a company that is being sold you can not make any binding statements about the future of the company you will no longer own. This is really management 101 and Palmer Luckey does not strike me as an absolute beginner here, he knew how to get funded, how to execute and had a ton of people telling him this would happen. Of course he and FB had a pretty strong incentive to ensure that there wouldn't be an immediate break-off risk to the acquisition, and of course there was plenty of evidence from other acquisitions that this is how the world works.
I'd like to believe him, but it is pretty hard to do so given the historic record of acquisitions to date.
For me the heuristic is simple: I won't believe a word a CEO that is selling his company says about what will happen post deal. They are no longer in control and should know better.
While the story is Palmer founded Oculus (and he was the original founder, so there is truth there), really Brendan Iribe, Michael Antonov and Nate Mitchell (Scaleform Mafia, all serial founders) negotiated the Facebook acquisition. Palmer was pushed out first after acquisition. He's a nice marketing story (nerdy young white boy reinvents VR) but he wasn't the driving force behind the business success (Brendan and Nate) or technical success (Carmack, Antonov, Abrash and many others like Dean Beeler and Volga Askoy).
We're also in a world where all the founders of Oculus have quit and no longer have a say in decisions like this. Facebook foundational employees and recent hires are running the show and the end game for Oculus is to give Facebook a platform that they control that is as pervasive as iOS or Android (or at least Xbox or PlayStation).
As a former Oculus and Facebook employee I'm torn by this. I always understood how a none trivial portion of the Oculus user base is extremely anti-Facebook, or even how people with Facebook accounts didn't want their Facebook account tied to Oculus. At the same time it would seriously reduce technical friction around using Facebook backend features in Oculus products. I know some folks would see this as a complete negative and I understand where you are coming from, but there are some interesting positive use cases as well.
Palmer Lucky did not create Oculus. He was a Masters student at USC and 3D printed a pretty case for a prototype developed by an international research project. I would know, because I've personally tested one of the early prototypes ...in Hamburg, Germany. He took it and ran and came up with some BS about having created it from scratch all by himself in his parents' garage in Silicon Valley. He's a liar and a fraud.
Is there a write-up of this somewhere? I'm interested to learn more.
Could you enlighten us about some of the interesting positive use cases?
> Palmer Luckey does not strike me as an absolute beginner here
Which is why smart founders can still get away with making these statements during the acquisitions so they can continue to grow their company post close (which means their post close bonus also stays in tact) and then leave after their golden handcuffs are done (usually 2-5 years).
> For me the heuristic is simple: I won't believe a word a CEO that is selling his company says about what will happen post deal. They are no longer in control and should know better.
For me, its on the other side of the coin. If I'm a founder and someone gives me billions of dollars for both acquiring my company and an additional bonus to pump the company I'm 100% incentivized to do everything possible to ensure that...even making forward statements that I don't genuinely believe are going to happen.
For everyone else - don't trust anyting an acquirer says - follow what they do.
I agree that the incentives are perfect to be as deceptive as possible.
I think Brendan Iribe did most of the management and fundraising. I like Palmer, but my impression was he hacked together a series of prototypes in the garage and ended up with a device that showed enough promise to bring in Iribe and Carmack.
(I think he really did believe at the time that Facebook wouldn't Facebook it up.)
The whole company was built off semi legally stolen valve tech due to valve naivete when the employees who advocated sharing the tech with oculus for free all got hired by oculus/Facebook.
Bad egg from the start from how they acquired tech and employees, to their exclusive policy on launch and their artificial compatibility issues with other headsets today, getting worse when selling out to Facebook is no surprise.
Facebook gonna Facebook!
Then he shouldn't have been CEO. Sorry, but that title comes with a bunch of responsibilities, both to your shareholders, your team and your customers/users.
He wasn't, at the time of the sale.
Fair enough, even so, as founder non-CEO you have even less standing to make such claims, and at that level you don't get to claim innocence. Incidentally, he then started a defense contractor, also not something where 'naive' is a pre on your resume. I don't know what the share division was at the time, but I am going to assume here that Iribe served at the pleasure of Luckey.
In the end it is nitpicking; the effect is much the same.
Actually, it appears Luckey was never CEO; I guess I remembered that wrong. I'm sure you're right that Luckey was likely the biggest shareholder by a fair bit.
In any case, Luckey was a 20-year old kid who got some lenses to point in the right direction to give a decent FOV. He had a good Kickstarter, hired a CEO, and two years later he sold to Facebook for billions. Should he have made those promises? Probably not. Should any of us have taken his predictions seriously about what Facebook would do in 6 years, which is 50% longer than Luckey's adult life at that point? Also probably not.
Yeah, it's not like, come Facebook acquisition, Palmer Luckey had a stellar record on keeping promises. Honestly, the Quest is the first time I could say the Oculus brand did not "fail to meet expectations". Prior to... uh, last year... they had always been a day late, a buck short.
>As a CEO of a company that is being sold you can not make any binding statements about the future of the company you will no longer own.
Agreed, but that's no different that ANY corporate statement on anything. Things change. A policy or statement may be true this year, but may not be true next year.
GitHub made many nice statements post-Microsoft acquisition, and you know what, Microsoft execs may even believe all of them today. In 5 years though - who knows.
>Of course he and FB had a pretty strong incentive to ensure that there wouldn't be an immediate break-off risk to the acquisition, and of course there was plenty of evidence from other acquisitions that this is how the world works.
That could be part of it. It could also be the case that FB just didn't make any decisions pertaining to this aspect of Oculus at that point in time. It could also be the case that FB had many different factions within its org that pushed for different things - one faction wanted to use FB login, another did not and the former faction won after a while.
This is less nefarious than people are making it out to be.
While your points are reasonable and I’d normally agree with them, Palmer as a person seems to be the opposite of this.
Look at his exit from FB and his funding of Trump groups in 2016.
His life, in its successes and failures, has often been the result of what appears to be optimistic naivety.
He believed BigCo FB would keep their word to him on FB login not being required. He believed FB wouldn’t essentially fire him for his political opinions as well.
Optimistic naivety? Extreme narcissism.
Most of the folks on this thread are commenting from the perspective of 2020, but Facebook had pretty significantly different reputation in 2014, especially around M&A. They had recently brought in both Instagram and WhatsApp without meddling in either their product stacks or their leadership teams. It's easy to claim now that this was all naive, but at the time it was plausible that these organizations and brands would remain fairly independent and autonomous within the Facebook umbrella.
Here's a blog post I wrote in response to the acquisition when it happened in 2014: https://medium.com/@shazow/re-facebook-acquires-oculus-f8589...
I was far from the only one who was saying this at the time. I don't believe Facebook had a significantly different reputation in 2014.
I also have a follow-up draft from 2016 that talks about how the things predicted in the blog post have already begun.
No.
This development was trivially predictable right when Facebook acquired Oculus. Which is why I bought Vive instead.
You don't need to be a genius to see stuff like this ahead of time. All you have to do is refuse to be gaslit and be honest about the high-level drivers of corporate decision-making.
I also spent an extra $100 to buy a Vive instead of a Rift. I didn't predict this exact action but I didn't trust Facebook to keep their fingers off of it
I wish there are viable alternatives for Quest.
I wish I'd done the same. Oculus Home is a truly atrocious piece of software and frankly I haven't touched my Rift in a year because of it.
Right? "Oh, you've got this full, 3D, completely spatial work space. Look at the fireplace, isn't it gorgeous? Now EAT A 2D MENU! EAT IT! RIGHT NOW IN YOUR FACE!!!"
More that it constantly asserts that things are working when they aren't and aren't when they are, freaks out if it isn't the only thing connected to an HDMI port though DP and DVI are fine, declares some titles "undownloadable" for no reason.
Nothing, though, compares to the irredeemable idiocy of forcing the user to have a monitor, mouse, and keyboard facing their play area in order to set up the guardian system, which you have to do essentially every time you use it because it will go out of alignment at a gnat's fart despite being screwed to the desk.
As an anecdote, I recently bought the Quest and have had a really seamless experience. None of these issues around display ports or configuring the play area for Guardian are a factor with this version.
$100 doesn't sound worth not having to use a facebook account to me. you can just make a bogus one with no info on it.
Can you? Don't you need a credit card attached?
Still possible but most people will not that far to hide information from facebook.
You need a CC attached to buy stuff on the Oculus store.
I've got 100+ VR games and never bought anything on the Oculus store. Steam games work just as well, and will be easier to use if you ever switch to another VR headset.
Same problem with Fitbit and Nest and Google :(
Had settled on getting a Fitbit as my fitness and sleep tracker, but was unaware of the acquisition by Google :/
Given the Oculus/FB fallout here I want to buy somewhere else.
And trusting Garmin seems a bit unlikely, sigh.
Apple Watch at iOS/apple seem to take privacy at least half serious
I have a general policy of not keeping hardware from known user-hostile companies in my house. They have way more time to worm things I don't want into their hardware than I have time to keep tabs on it, so I just don't.
> This development was trivially predictable right when Facebook acquired Oculus. Which is why I bought Vive instead.
Did you just predict it happening "eventually"?
If you predicted it would happen before your headset was obsolete, I'd say you were wrong. And that's usually the important part for making a purchase. Six to seven years is enough lifetime for an early VR kit.
A big part of the draw for Oculus is platform-exclusives. Even if the hardware is obsolete, the catalog of games you bought on their store isn't, and if that's tied to staying in their hardware ecosystem when you upgrade....
Certainly there are better headsets out now than the original Vive, but I'm not sure I'd classify it as obsolete. You can still take a modern VR title and play it and get the full experience. Calling the original Vive obsolete at this stage would be like calling 1080p monitors obsolete.
Tracking keeps improving in important ways, the resolution is not amazing, and we still have more than two years before we actually hit the point where I'm saying it will be obsolete.
Why hasn't it happened to Instagram and WhatsApp then if it was trivially predictable?
Because they have several European regulators breathing down their neck when it comes to WhatsApp at least. So it isn't as if Facebook hasn't tried to move into that direction.
The fact that it was actually discussed back then, people were asking about it and that Luckey was assuring them that it won't happen (even despite of the fact that he wasn't going to be in charge anymore) clearly shows that Facebook's reputation wasn't as "significantly different" back then than how you paint it.
The people here are very on point and no doubt said the same thing in 2014 if they were privacy minded at the time. Most are under no delusion that "we will not do _______ , either now, or in the future" as empty promises. They were right then and they're right now. Facebook has obviously been in the business of selling its users out from the very beginning and no one who lives in this reality would have accepted such a promise from them as anything other than a nicety.
Mmm... nah.
From the 2014 HN thread[0]
>Please login using your Facebook account to continue.
> Facebook had pretty significantly different reputation in 2014
That's not really true. Hipster antitrust wasn't a thing yet, so people weren't talking about it at your neighborhood Starbucks. But serious people were talking about it. Look at the conflicts of interest disclosures for prominent antitrust scholars... they were busy during that period.
Also, the infamous "Zuckerberg destroy mode" email is from 2012.
afaik they also betrayed similar promises made to the WhatsApp founders, to their dismay.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17304792/whatsapp-jan-kou...
>user: nrp
>Founder at Framework, formerly part of the Oculus founding team
I don't recall it being much different, but I _do_ recall the outcry from Oculus followers and fans when the buyout occurred. This is exactly what we predicted and the fact that PL was assuring us it wouldn't happen would seem to disagree with what you're saying. It seems you may have just been ignoring it at the time for what may be a very obvious reason.
It doesn't really matter though, does it? No matter what the history of Facebook he wasn't in a position to make those promises, period.
You can only make promises about what you control.
I have to disagree, many assumed there would be some kind of hamfisted integration even in 2014. The only surprising thing is how long they held off.
I had huge concerns regarding FB's purchase of Oculus at the time and I wasn't the only one. It was the single reason I did not buy an Oculus. It wasn't that I thought they would be brazen either, I just assumed they would be hoovering data up behind the scenes, and trading data between Oculus and FB.
If this announcement had occurred in 2014, it would not have been surprising, I think the concerns were clear from the outset to most of the community. The only people who were starry eyed were those who just wanted Oculus funded well and were happy to take the word of the founder.
I was posting here and reddit in 2014. No they really had a terrible reputation back then too.
Facebook's reputations in 2014 or 2020 don't matter. This is what happens and how the world works.
No. Facebook already had a history of lying by 2014.
Partner Luckey himself had admitted he was wrong. Why are you holding out and embarassing yourself further?
>In hindsight, the downvotes from people with more real-world experience than me were definitely justified.
I don't want to assume bad intent, but I find it hard to believe that someone could be so naive about the project and the organization controlling it.
Without assuming bad intent, I think it's safe to say people will tend to think in line with what makes them comfortable with the massive amount of money they are about to get.
To close the deal, I suspect that many assurances were offered by Facebook. Why do we assume that he lied instead of someone at Facebook?
If I'm reading most of these comments correctly it's that it doesn't matter if he was lied to, he should have known that this is how the world works.
"should have known" is what most of these comments are talking about. As a thought experiment assume he was lied to, most of these comments are talking about the ignorance and whether it was sincere. Was he this naive or is it easy to be this naive (i.e. self imposed ignorance) when there's a deal to be made.
I don't think any reasonable person thinks Luckey lied. They think he said something stupid, was called on it, and double-down.
Now that it has proven out as people expected, they're calling him out on it again. Perhaps other people will learn a lesson from it? I can hope.
I think he was 17 (or close to that) when starting the original kickstarter.
Carmack also wanted to sell because he had built businesses before and wanted to focus on the technology without having to deal with survival.
It wouldn't surprise me if Luckey believed that would be the outcome. I think Zuck's strategy as CEO was also less clear then. Today it would be obvious, back then though, I'm not so sure.
> I think Zuck's strategy as CEO was also less clear then. Today it would be obvious, back then though, I'm not so sure.
I think Facebooks business strategy how to make money was pretty clear at that time as well. Just remember the [Facebook Home](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Home) Android launcher that allowed the company unprecedented access to the data on the device. https://gigaom.com/2013/04/04/why-facebook-home-bothers-me-i...
Are we talking about the same company?
The one whose business idea it is to lock up all the world's information?
The one that, together with Quora and Instagram, shove a login screen in your face when you haplessly click the wrong link? When all you really wanted some some local business opening hours or contact information?
The one that already owns your contact information, and aren't afraid to tell you so, because they tricked any one of your friends into letting their app suck their contact book dry?
Quora isn't owned by Facebook, you know?
He was pretty young and didn't have professional experience at large companies. I think naivety is a reasonable explanation.
He was also homeschooled, so it's kind of a triple whammy as far as naivety goes
Why do you find it hard to believe that someone could be so naive?
A combination of his past successes with Oculus, Facebook's track record, and his extraordinarily high confidence that the thing lots of people were afraid would happen, wouldn't happen
His success was largely as an engineer hacking together prototypes and as a hype man, pulling in the interest of bigger names like John Carmack.
Not to mention his demonstrated history of putting his foot in his mouth. This is hardly the first time he was later proven wrong on something he originally promised.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4gfpjk/palmer_lucke...
probably because a giant tech behemoth buying up a small company and giving it the good old Borg treatment is a tale as old as time.
Let's be real, the reason he was wilfully naive is because they send him a big fat check, just like they did to the Whatsapp founders, in the same year I think.
I just wish they would at least be honest and say it instead of this whole "I thought our dreams would come true" talk.
He hasn't managed to give all his money away to a wallet inspector yet. That's about the level of naivete needed to believe in a promise FB of all people tells you to get you to sell your company to them.
It was 6 years ago in 2014. Facebook has done a lot of stuff since then to reveal it's true colors.
Plus, Luckey was 22 in 2014. That's plenty young to be naive (though that does nothing to excuse his behavior since then).
Facebook was also still taking a hands off with acquisitions like Instagram the time.
Here's how money works on people:
Step 1: They get an credible offer for a ton of money.
Step 2: Their brain starts to spiral out of control and can't stop imagining all of the things they can do for themselves, their family, their friends, the world, etc
Step 3: They've just created millions of incentives for themselves.
It takes a very strong person to drive out the biases that money creates in our brains. Monetary incentives are the strongest bias creators, beaten (probably) only by sex and blood (i.e. family relations). Breaking them is the work of an iron will. You had better assume you'd do no better.
I think performing mental gymnastics to avoid bad intent is silly. Many people have actual bad intentions. “The divide between good and evil cuts through the heart of every man”
I don't believe him at all. If it is true, then that's surprisingly dumb of him. I'd respect him more if he just admitted he sold out for a life-changing amount of money. Heck, I probably would have done it too.
People often become conveniently naive when offered a lot of money.
>I don't want to assume bad intent, but I find it hard to believe that someone could be so naive about the project and the organization controlling it.
Let's not assume bad intent and recognize the reality that things change. That any corporate statement or policy is not true in perpetuity. It's very possible that at the time FB really did believe it. It has been 6 years since the acquisition after all.
Maybe he assumed that his new position would allow him to veto or persuade the rest of Facebook to not make such a move? I could certainly see somebody being naive enough on that front.
Hopefully Palmer Luckey has more foresight into how technology can be used in unintended ways now that he is building autonomous defense and surveillance system at Anduril Industries.
My preliminary and not very careful analysis reveals that he doesn't give a fuck about anybody except for #1.
He specifically left facebook so he could "shitpost for Donal Trump: https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13025422/palmer-luckey-oc...
Palmer is a first class jerk and other things I would maybe get banned for saying, but this is as good and honest an apology as I think he can give. Things change, and it has been many years since he said this.
> Things change.
That's kind of the whole point. Unless there is some sort of legally binding contract that says things won't change, and that contract can't be changed without consent of all parties, whatever BS comes out of some exec's mouth should just be completely ignored. All you should look at are the underlying incentives, and it was always clear that Oculus would be fully assimilated into FB.
Practically every corporate acquisition in the history of ever goes something like: day 1: "Nothing will change." Six months later: "All you knew is gone."
Six years in this case. Not too shabby really.
If you look at the direction the headsets of taken things had definitely already changed.
Just make a fake FB account exclusively for this purpose. If you're forced to use a FB account at least don't link it to your actual profile. I have a separate fake FB account for every service that requires FB.
This is great advice until Facebook blocks your secondary accounts, which might end up costing you access to any data/saves/content tied to your oculus or whatever linked services. Just look at how much destruction Google causes people and businesses by closing down all of their accounts for even accidental associations with flagged accounts.
Until they make you download the FB app to use it, and then they get access to everything you do on your phone and follow you around the internet. So sacrifice your privacy, or sacrifice the Oculus. I know which one I'm going to choose.
Apps don't have access to everything you do on your phone.
You should really look at what the FB app does have access to...
I tried doing that just moments ago and it wouldn't let me proceed without providing a phone number.
Fine, they can have the number of the burner phone that spends its time in my desk drawer with a dead battery, and is used for nothing but jumping through privacy-invading hoops.
Better send it back and ask for a refund. They intentionally broke something they advertised with.
What phone number do you use for each account you create?
You can use the Burner iOS app for a temporary number
Interesting. Just downloaded the app and the first thing it asks for is my number (which makes sense, I suppose). Without digging too deep -- is there cost associated here?
Facebook has historically be truly crappy in this regards. The Instagram founders had a similar story, but rather than publish a half-apology, they left the company (walking away from quite a bit of money in the process.
It's gotta be hard to be a founder in a situation like this.
What are we looking for from CEOs? I feel like, if a CEO had made such flatly incorrect promises about something with direct financial implications (sales, costs, the industry in general) they would be seen as failing at their job. Luckey seems comfortable simply pointing out that he didn't make the mistake people have accused him of. It's enough to say he made another (perhaps lesser) mistake. There's nothing in the statement that reckons with his previous understanding of FB or Occulus and what else he might have gotten wrong. It feels disappointing to me.
also interesting from that reddit thread were these comments:
> I'm mostly surprised that they haven't done this with Whatsapp or Instagram thus far, but they are doing it for Oculus accounts.
> > As of a few days ago, they're starting the process of moving Instagram DMs to Messenger, requiring a FB account. So, they are.
> > > The people I know in product at Facebook are certain it is an inevitability for their entire portfolio. That's second-party hearsay, so take it as you will, but it's my operating understanding that is their long term (multi-year) goal.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/ic4ye1/new_oculus_u...
These promises are made from acquirers to acquirees so that they can save face, and tell everyone that they received these promises so that they have a rebuttal to accusations of being a "sell-out."
They aren't done with a wink and a nudge, but everyone knows that they're bullshit, it lets the entrepreneur maintain his public image while letting the carnivore devour its meal in due course.
I don't know enough about Palmer Luckey to make any kind of statement about him or his decisions but as Upton Sinclair said:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his [possible billions] depends upon his not understanding it.
He absolutely knew that this was a very real possibility and made the statements anyways to save face at the time. He was probably hoping no one would care when it eventually happened.
I would argue that he was and still is lying. He had the power to make good on his promise in the form of contractual terms during the sale, but didn't.
A lot of people forget just how young Palmer Lucky is.
I absolutely believe his post here. He was young and naive and believed the lies from the Facebook executives. Completely understandable and I hope this doesn't make people think he's a liar.
Don't people realize they're complaining at a billionare and have basically no leverage at all? This backlash should have come BEFORE Palmer got PAID, not YEARS LATER. I don't think Palmer even goes on reddit anymore.
he seems to quite regularly https://reddit.com/user/palmerluckey/
I dunno. If I had that kind of money, I would hire someone to use reddit for me.
You mean like how politicians have social media interns to manage their Twitter? what benefit would Palmer get from being on reddit in that way?
More free time
on /r/NyanNekoSugarGirls though? :)
Well, almost everyone who starts a sentence with "I guarantee that" is bound to turn up as a failure.
To the extent that Facebook made those promises to someone authorized to disseminate them, I wonder if they've opened themselves up to refund claims well beyond original purchase dates.
If anyone purchased the device relying upon Palmer Luckey's promises, that could be promissory estoppel.
(Not a lawyer, etc etc.)
Class action lawsuit ending in a $20 coupon for next Oculus purchase.
Did you click "Agree" to the new ToS? We told you of the changes and you agreed. Go fly a kite! --Facebook
To be fair, in my case, I did not. I actually received one as a gift last Christmas. I never got around to setting it up (still in packaging). I was planning on trying it out when I had some free time. Now I have a useless device that I can’t even return since I refuse to create a Facebook account.
You can use it for at least two years if you create an oculus account before October, according to the linked statement.
Return it to Amazon.
These same type of statements were made by the whatsapp founders regarding ads on whatsapp(they said they will never happen etc.)[1]
All that went out the window once the company was bought for 19B, sure both founders left a few years later, but their statements were false after the sale.
That kind of promise from Facebook should be enforceable on court.
If it is not it's only because the current government judicial system is so full of spam-cases and it is so inefficient that it doesn't have room for these things.
Honestly, it might well be actionable for purchasers of existing hardware. They can legitimately point towards a public statement made by a company agent authorised by his employer and that they bought the device on that basis.
The problem is that if Facebook had to pay out $20 million to make this go away they'd consider that to be entirely a cost worth paying.
Yeah like when the promised not to use any WhatsApp data. And here we are, I give it 1 year before we see commercials and deep integration with FB messenger. Who believes anything they say anymore?
Could this be the reason for John Carmack leaving facebook
Sounds like the promise was at least made in good faith which counts for something.
Yep: you cannot promise anything beyond your control.
"I guarantee...." Time to pay up
Perhaps it also went like this:
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucksHe was lying then. He's lying now.
so is this the start of virtual world deeply integration to facebook society?
Never trust your acquirer farther than you can throw them
This is something that still completely baffles me about the "IoT"/"smart devices"/"connected devices"/"whatever you want to call it" space.
If someone advertised a device as capable of doing X without it in fact being able to do X, they'd be liable for false advertising.
If someone sold you a device, then took it back or destroyed it, they'd be liable for theft or destruction of property.
Nevertheless, if someone sells you a connected device and then completely alters the rules by which the device operates at an arbitrary point in time after the sell, that's perfectly fine.
Have we really given up basic consumer rights that easily?
>Have we really given up basic consumer rights that easily?
Well, yes. I don't know if you've noticed, but short-term convenience trumps all other concerns. The market can't really deal with these issues, because they are too subtle and expensive for individuals to work out for themselves. We really do need collective action, by way of regulation, similar to how we recognized as a society that workplace safety laws were not something private businesses were ever going to compete on, and we just needed to force them to comply. And no doubt the same howls of protest let loose then, too, about how "the extra costs will put me out of business", etc. It was then, as it is now, hogwash.
And in fact I would argue this kind of regulation not only important for consumers, but for national security. As more and more individuals lives become dependent on centralized information infrastructure, the more damage espionage (foreign or domestic) can do, not to mention the effect of wide-scale DoS attacks. Imagine a world where all smart devices are bricked...so much of the old infrastructure is gone - phones, phone books, maps, manuals. In some cases you might not even be able to vacuum your house (Roomba owners), or make a POTS phone call.
So yeah, its bad on multiple fronts, and I fear that the correcting event will be catastrophic (like, supply chain catastrophic, leading to starvation).
We're seeing this right now with Epic's Tim Sweeney suing Apple for its mandatory cut on all digital goods. Yet a large number of people, people who claim to be pro-99%, anti-technocracy, anti-corporatism, are shilling the rhetoric that "it's Apple's platform" and "Epic knew what the terms were."
Well, yes, but that's exactly what SV activists and social activists are claiming has to stop. It's absurd that these same people are willing to defend the iPhone/iOS/Apple Services pipeline of proprietary anticompetitive dependencies.
I hope Epic wins this case against Apple. It's a precedent that needs to be set for limiting anticompetitive business and manufactured monopolies. Nothing Apple has in its portfolio is absent a perfect substitute in the very same market Apple is selling their products. But Apple has used proprietary inputs as a gatekeeper for their revenue. No one should have to buy a $49 dongle to plug an HDMI cable into their iPhone when every Android/Windows/Linux-based device has built-in support within the device. And if someone tries to push a "Lightning" to HDMI cable, Apple detects and deliberately locks off device content.
Too many big, beloved logos are built on anti-free market tactics, both by lobbying policy and private act. The sheer volume of this that Steve Jobs did in his lifetime made it hard for me to feel anything when he died. I genuinely felt relieved that this tyrant in technology, a man whose every product idea was just enough of a change of someone else's existing work product, slapped with intentional proprietary inputs to limit competition within the Apple eco-system, was finally gone. And then Tim Cook sashay'd on in.
> We're seeing this right now with Epic's Tim Sweeney suing Apple for its mandatory cut on all digital goods. I hope Epic wins this case against Apple.
It's amazing how everyone who brings that up avoids this question:
Does Epic allow anyone to create and and sell content for Fortnite, without giving Epic any money?
Do Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo allow other stores on their consoles?
> Do Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo allow other stores on their consoles?
Good idea, let's make that a requirement too. The law could be something like "if you sell a general purpose computing device, you're not allowed to mandate software vendor lockin". That would open up so many possibilities, it would be great for the people who own consoles.
Video game consoles are not general computing devices. Their controlled and curated walled gardens are part of the consumer appeal, and the absence of those would make consoles no different than PCs. If consumers wanted that they'd be buying PCs only.
Video game console are general computing devices. Their input & output tends to be limited (no keyboard nor mouse, at least by default), but they still run arbitrary programs (namely, any game).
One major, technical differences from PCs, is the uniformity of the hardware. This is becoming less true, but consoles traditionally have fixed hardware. No "works on my machine" problems on consoles. This also guarantees stable performance characteristics, that developers can optimise for. (This is less true now that consoles are resembling PCs more and more internally).
This is even more visible on older consoles: take an N64 (PS2), plug in a cartridge (insert a CD), and voilà you have your game, completely separated from any other program. Perhaps one of those programs could be GNU/Linux, but the default would still to be running on the bare metal, without interference from other programs. Quite unlike the PC there.
Incidentally, I could see a new game console solve the Thirty Million Lines Problem. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031 Fixed, powerful hardware with a well defined interface could possibly trigger the OS competition that is so sorely lacking rights now: Windows, Linux, MacOS, IOS, Android, and if you pick a particular niche (Server, Mobile, Desktop), you'd rarely see more than 2 significant contenders.
Can you still say it runs arbitrary games if you need a license to be able to run them?
For example, is my microwave a general purpose computing device just because I can upgrade the firmware, even if the firmware has to be signed by the manufacturer?
If the vendor requires a license to let you run software on a powerful multi-media (sound, image, input, network) device they sold you, then I can tell you they put restrictions on what would otherwise be a general purpose computer. In my opinion, such crippling should be illegal.
For instance: the iPhone. It would definitely be general purpose if you didn't have to go through the App Store™.
Your microwave oven is different: minimum input, minimum display, one main purpose (heat food). Properly constructed ones can easily be bug-free on the first try, no need for patches. The firmware may even be fused into a strictly read-only chip. Clearly single purpose.
Personally, I'd tentatively set the limit at programmability: if there's any way to reprogram a machine, the user should be able to do it without authorization from the vendor. (We could make exceptions, for instance break control software in cars: such software should probably be tested to death and vetted by regulation. Preventing users from rolling their own may be justified to avoid untimely deaths on the road. Though "preventing" here could mean "legally disallow" rather than "use DRM". Not sure which is best.)
> In my opinion, such crippling should be illegal.
But I want that, as a consumer. For example: part of the benefit, perhaps one of the greatest benefits, is knowing that everyone using the device is subject to the same constraints. This makes cheating in online games on consoles much harder on consoles. It still happens, but it's much harder.
Why should it be illegal to sell me a device that limits the use of arbitrary code? I _want_ that in the product I'm buying.
Ah, yes, cheating. Yet somehow, we have competitive games on the PC. So no, I don't buy that argument.
PC competitive games are rampant with cheating; the cost of keeping cheaters off games is so astronomical that only major studios can afford to do it, and even still, cheating remains rampant. It's why cash prizes are fought over in hardware controlled venues.
While on consoles... It's much better.
Oh, I totally get that it's harder. At some point though, if you're serious about competition, you organise a LAN. (Too bad games gradually moved away from LAN altogether.)
More generally, locked down hardware means you have to trust a central third party. The cypherpunk in me doesn't like that. There has to be a better way (though I don't know what).
LANs are just a way of locking down the hardware and software of the competitors; they also aren't a viable option if you're unable to be physically near to your opponents.
The better way is to buy a general computing device if that's what you prefer, and let others buy their locked down devices if that's what they prefer.
Here's the thing: I'm not sure we can, in the long run, have it both ways. Not naturally anyway. The current tendency seems to go towards generalised lock down. It started with game consoles. Then iOS. And now even on the desktop, we see scary warnings from Windows and bypassing signature verification in MacOS is actually difficult if you don't know the procedure already. And soon, maybe those warnings will turn into hard errors?
For me to chose an open device, that open device has to exist in the first place. Where is the open equivalent of the PS5? I don't see any. And even if it did: I bet many competitive game would exclusively found in the locked down version. Or, more insidiously, there would be two arena: the locked down one with fewer (or no?) cheaters, and the open one with (presumably) all the cheaters. There would be a strong incentive to get the locked down version for this reason alone, and one isn't going to waste money & resources on a redundant piece of electronics just so they can play without cheats and access the homebrew market.
Now that I think of it, there might be a way: how about optional signatures? You'd take the same hardware, and run it in two modes: the open mode, and the signed mode. The signed mode would be thoroughly locked down by the hardware vendor, and run only signed code. This could affect networking too: just sign the encryption keys with the secure chip, and pass that along with a certificate from Nintendo or whoever. That way one would know the communication was initiated in "signed mode", thus guaranteeing the integrity of the game's binary, just like we would in an actually locked down console.
Heck, we could go even a step further: have the hardware security module be swappable. That way we can separate the hardware vendor from the certificate authority. Of course, they'd be one and the same by default, but we could still switch for another if we need to. (You could have a tournament specific CA, or the hardware vendor could revoke it's own HSM and send a new one to people.)
DRM for the people. Never thought I'd say that.
> Where is the open equivalent of the PS5?
Raspberry Pi w/ RetroPi or Batocera. Perhaps sometime in the future it'll be Batocera on a RISCV.
You won't get better because without huge corporate dollars, as is the case with the Linux kernel, Gnome and KDE, you won't be able to fund the QA and devs necessary to do the bullshit boring work that is essential to making certain that consoles are a polished experience; from the operating system through to every game you purchase.
TCRs and TRCs are a thing, after all. You cannot ship without meeting a certain level of minimal tolerable quality.
> And even if it did: I bet many competitive game would exclusively found in the locked down version.
Yes. Of course.
What's in it for the developers when consumers demand anti-cheat measures, which are hideously expensive to maintain, and active and pervasive moderation which is, likewise, hideously expensive to maintain? To say nothing of the _total absence_ of any strong example of a FOSS video game performing well enough to fund a AAA-quality title.
> You'd take the same hardware, and run it in two modes: the open mode, and the signed mode.
Sony has done this twice. There was the PSOne's Net Yaroze, and there was the PS3's ability to run Linux (only for the first few iterations). Consumers didn't care enough for Sony to bother with it again.
IIRC, Xbox One indie developer licenses are still basically almost free.
Your idea is still locked down, though; you cannot run arbitrary code because you cannot cross the signed/unsigned boundaries.
> DRM for the people.
Browsers have this in the form of media extensions.
> Raspberry Pi w/ RetroPi or Batocera.
The R-Pi is nowhere near the raw capabilities of the PS5. Can't do that amazing Unreal Engine demo, or VR. A difference in degree large enough to be considered a difference in kind in my opinion. (I do reckon the R-Pi is powerful enough to do serious stuff, up to and including being a blazing fast workstation if we wrote the software for it.)
Batocera is not a piece of hardware? Could act as a platform for sure, but an ISA (fully specified, which means CPU + GPU + most peripherals) would in my opinion be better than an API. Closer to reality. Of course, we'd need APIs on top.
Two interesting aspects of consoles are the fixed ISA, and the fixed performance characteristics. We could possibly lift the latter without much consequences, as long as the hardware provides a well defined set of performance floors, that would determine what can run at which speed.
> you won't be able to fund the QA and devs necessary to do the bullshit boring work that is essential to making certain that consoles are a polished experience; from the operating system through to every game you purchase.
I certainly wouln't. The best I can boast about is having raised $7000 from the OTF for a 7-day security audit.
That said, it seems to me the "polished experience" is composed of fairly separate, or at least separable, problems. At the bottom is the hardware. Or even ISA. We need a hardware company to make that stuff. Not just the CPU, but all the rest. (Repeating what Casey said, stuff like GPU are becoming stable and general enough that fixing an ISA wouldn't have a significant negative impact on their evolution.) To do that, we need a big player like Intel or Nvidia on board — good fucking luck with that, unfortunately.
The second problem is provide high-level services that run on the hardware. OS, middleware… A huge undertaking if we're to have any backwards compatibility (we'd at least have to port Linux, and recompile everything). Perhaps not so bad if we flip the table and go in a direction closer in spirit to the Oberon project (Niklaus Wirth), or STEPS (Alan Kay's Viewpoint Research Institute).
The third problem is writing one or several store fronts like Steam.
The fourth problem is writing the actual games (and other applications). In some ways the easiest problem to solve, and in other ways the hardest. Easiest because game devs will go wherever they could sell their games, providing the ISA/API isn't too horrible (sometimes even when it is). The hardest because (i) that's where most of the effort will go, and (ii) the incentives of making the platform easy to work with may not be commensurate with that effort.
The zeroth problem is separating the above. The current world is set up for vertical integration. Apple and console vendors are the most extreme examples, but even Windows tends to be sold with the PC, in such a way that removing it is often not even cheaper. I have the feeling that we should think about a legal structure that would make it happen. This would include thinking about what corporations are supposed to enable. (This is where I start to question the entire economic system, so let's just note that pushed far enough, pretty much any subject has political implications.)
> Sony has done this twice. [PS3]. Consumers didn't care enough for Sony to bother with it again.
Wait a minute, if the first iterations of the PS3 could run Linux, how hard could have it been to port that ability to the new versions? I suspect they ended it for other reasons. If for instance the console did not by itself generated enough profit, and they compensated with online services, they'd have an incentive to limit sales to actual gamers, and run from the compute-cluster market.
> IIRC, Xbox One indie developer licenses are still basically almost free.
It's not just a matter of price. Can we make and sell porn games on the XBox One? I've heard that platforms like iOS disallow porn. And I don't see console vendors taking the heat for being "that platform with porn on it".
If regulation forced hardware vendors to open up their platforms, you could access questionable content on them, and nobody would take the flak. You'd still have "safe for work" store fronts, and porn hubs, and whatever controversial stuff huge corporation wouldn't feel like supporting.
> Your idea is still locked down, though; you cannot run arbitrary code because you cannot cross the signed/unsigned boundaries.
Locked down, yes, but the idea was to not lock people out of the system entirely. The main idea is that signed mode would give one additional ability: to prove that a given program, and the data it produces, traces back to a certificate chain that goes up to a given trusted certificate authority. (Sony gives Blizzard a certificate, Blizzard uses it to sign Starcraft 3, which then produces Blizzard authenticated network packets to stop cheats).
Unsigned programs should not be locked out of the platform at all. They'd just not be explicitly approved of, and maybe we'd display some warning before installation that this program is not endorsed, and may contain or do stuff that is "Not Good For You".
We probably won't see a competitive erotic wrestling game any time soon (no signatures to help cheat prevention), but at least we don't sacrifice some capabilities just so we can have other capabilities.
> but they still run arbitrary programs (namely, any game).
They run authorized programs, not arbitrary programs.
They can continue to use the PlayStation store, continue to have exclusive games, and need not see any difference except by choice.
What is the downside?
The hardware prices increase due to the loss of license fee revenue.
Console vendors aren't allowed to sell hardware at a loss. The price increase would be mild… and a truer reflection of the costs of owning a console (less hidden costs from the walled garden aspects).
Sony took a loss on PS4 sales: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/09/20/sony-to-tak...
This is normal.
The price increase would not have been mild - at the time this was written, it was the cost of a full game. When most only own a handful of games that's a significant difference.
I stand corrected, thanks.
Tells us something about the real price of that console, though. People don't see the price of the walled garden, since (i) it's always been this way, and (ii) it looks like the garden is providing flowers (in the form of a store). Such hidden (or externalised) costs are a bit of a lie. I'd rather be aware of the true price of what I'm buying.
Flowers without weeds and gardens largely free of pests.
Okay, this is where the analogy breaks down: one can totally have a non exclusive app store where people are guaranteed a certain level of quality, and a reasonable expectation of not downloading malware. For instance: Steam.
The only thing non-exclusive stores can't do is protect people from themselves. And even then you could still have the kid gloves on by default, yet let people take them off whenever they want. For instance by displaying some mildly scary warning about some program not being verified by the OS vendor, and then still let people click on the "install anyway" button. (The "Windows protected your PC" popup would be like that, though I think it overshoots to the point of dishonesty.)
Steam (almost[1]) nails the malware-free part, but people's drive to make it open to all and not fully curated (to remove AAA biases) also led to it becoming full of shovelware and "baby's first game" products. Conversely, Epic Games Store is doing the complete opposite with a heavily-curated store and a tightly-controlled catalog.
[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/steam-game-allegedly-mi...
Steam is a poor example because it's both full of shovelware and its products are plagued by cheaters.
I'm a PC Gamer myself, but I also stopped playing anything ranked. There's no point.
Console stores are not better in that regard though. I've heard plenty of complaints about the amount of trash in the Nintendo store, for example. All you're guaranteed with a vendor store is a lock of malware.
This is more of an anecdote as someone already linked the PS4 example, but: Sony lost on each sale of the PS3, sometimes a lot ($300 on launch), for years. After 4 years, they still lost around $18 per unit lost[1]. It was a costly bet that ended up not working out for them as the PS3 continued to be expensive to manufacture, while also being too complicated to program effectively. (Worse ports, perceived lower performance due to SMT differences compared to the 360, etc.)
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/sony-still-losing-on-every-playsta...
The same can be said of Macs and iOS devices.
It would be the end of consoles. The economics of the Xbox/PlayStation/NintendoWhatever presume vendor lock-in.
Not really, the economics are just better for the platform with vendor lock-in. They'd still recoup their costs via their store, which they can gift powerful advantages like making it default, having it be more integrated in various ways, etc. It would likely end up as a power-law distribution of store usage with the platform owner on top, so platforms would still make their profits. Having an option for another store wouldn't be the end of anything, and would improve consumer agency significantly.
The lethal threat to fully unlocked consoles with no contractual limits ruled out by law isn't other stores or even piracy. It's people realizing that if they're selling the hardware at a loss, it'll likely be the most cost efficient GPU compute you can buy. This isn't supposition, it happened with the PS3: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supe...
There are jailbreaks for the PS4, and it seems more likely than not that there will also be jailbreaks for the PS5. The barriers for actors who want to exploit console compute power are not significant. But they are significant for regular consumers.
Building cluster out of machines you’re not sure you’ll be able to consistently jailbreak and therefore replace even in the near term is a huge barrier to building a PS4 cluster like the PS3 ones.
You just need to make sure that they have a vulnerable firmware version. Once you've jaikbroken a machine once, you're done.
I mean replacing machines as they break. A large cluster you can’t maintain is a poor investment.
Oh, that's true, I didn't think about that.
They wouldn't be selling the hardware at a loss.
Isn't that roughly what Google has done with Android? They can choose what they want to curate in their own app store, but they don't lock users in based on hardware or use of Android OS. (Someone should take them to court over their prioritization of AMP pages, but that's a different story).
What about > Does Epic allow players to buy Fortnite content from outside of Fortnite, without giving Epic any money?
This is a disingenuous comparison. Epic does not sell content not made by Epic in Fortnite, while Apple sells content not made by Apple in the App Store. This is like saying a branded clothing store in a mall has to sell things that aren't of its brand if it wants to complain about the mall throttling its sales.
Ah, so you're saying the key difference is that Apple has allowed the sale of third party content in their product. Do you agree then, that:
1. If Apple didn't allow the sale of third party content, they would be in the same position as Epic and therefore there would be no problem?
2. If Epic allowed the sale of third party content, they should not be allowed to control what type of content is sold, nor should they be allowed to collect a percentage of each sale?
> 2. If Epic allowed the sale of third party content, they should not be allowed to control what type of content is sold, nor should they be allowed to collect a percentage of each sale?
I don't think anyone has a problem with platforms charging _a_ percentage of each sale, just that Apple's is too high (and in the case of their dispute with Spotify, that it allows them to unfairly compete in their own marketplace)
Except Epic wants to force Apple to allow third-party payments so they can entirely avoid the Apple fee.
> just that Apple's is too high
How much do Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo/Steam charge?
If Apple did not allow the sale of third party content, there wouldn't be "a cut". It's all in house products made by Apple.
Would we accept if the $1000 computer we buy forces us to use only their OS, can install software from their own store only, will receive only 3-5 years of software updates?
Why should we give a smartphone manufacturer(who ever it may be) such overwhelming ownership over their hardware when the computer manufacturers don't get it?
In the US, we need collective action by way of class action lawsuits. Unfortunately, almost all terms of service now require you tp waive that right.
The change needed is a law that prevents waiving the right to class action. Such a law would be considered highly unfavorable to business and would not pass under a Republican majority/presidency. Consider who you vote for accordingly.
Everything going on with Patreon's arbitration mess is in opposition to your post. Maybe the world isn't as black and white as you think.
It appears you are misinformed, both about what I think, and the import of the Patreon case. The fact that Patreon botched their arbitration clause, allowing folks to sue individually a possibly bankrupt Patreon, is striking evidence of how powerful a shield arbitration provides. A shield which I don’t believe corporations deserve.
>similar to how we recognized as a society that workplace safety laws were not something private businesses were ever going to compete on,
Democratic-ish societies get laws AFTER society is mostly in agreement on something. We got workplace safety laws because most workplaces had already started to care and the point of the laws were to force low margin industries and other hold-outs to get on board.
I mostly agree with the rest of your comment but your order of operations is simply backwards.
It baffles me too. My Samsung smart tv started showing me ads in the control panel/home screen. I paid full price for it, why am I seeing ads. I wish I could return it, but the snakes waited until the return period was over.
In the case of the smart tv it's actually because you didn't really pay the full price of the tv. The manufacturer counts on the revenue from those ads to boost the tv profit margin to an acceptable level, otherwise they would have to charge you more for the tv initially.
If you don't believe me, look up the price of a "commercial display" comparable to your tv. And before anyone asks, the majority of customers would rather have a cheaper tv with ads in the menus than a more expensive one without.
>In the case of the smart tv it's actually because you didn't really pay the full price of the tv
How can the consumer know, if it is not disclosed?
And when every TV manufacturer is doing "ads in your smart TV", there is no incentive to not sell it at full price AND show you ads.
I think that a good step would be to require a sizeable disclaimer on the box/marketing material stating that it is ad-supported/tracking-supported. That way it is much easier for consumers to know why the price is as cheap as it is.
Commercial displays are not more expensive because they don't have ads - that's an absurd suggestion. They are more expensive because they have higher requirements. They need to be running for at least 8 hours per day without issues, but often 24/7, as opposed to the usual 4-6. That's the main difference.
They also have to deal with direct sunlight and a wider range of thermal conditions. Commercial displays are often placed in shop windows, the panel needs to stand up to that, and the electronics need active cooling for when the chassis warms up.
That might be true, but it's not an "absurd suggestion." Amazon will sell you a Kindle for nearly 20% cheaper if you let it show you ads.
In terms of actual dollars, those ads are worth about 20. The value isn't much different for a TV.
When many commercial displays are hundreds of dollars more, it's pretty absurd to suggest ads are a large factor.
Only hundreds of dollars? Where do you find those? I would by a dumb panel on a trustworthy device for mere hundreds more.
Iiyama? They sell great high-contrast LCDs in various ratings, typically starting at 8/5 and up to the obligatory 24/7.
I can recommend the Nvidia Shield [0] as an alternative to dealing with the Samsung firmware. I bought it after seeing it recommended here on HN. It's snappy, it has the apps that I care about (Plex, Youtube, and various Australian public on-demand channels). Also it pretty much just works. It turns on together with the tv and you basically don't have to deal with anything Samsung at all anymore. It has some gaming capabilities but I never tried those and don't care.
This happened to me to. It now is not connected to the internet and never will be again. It's also the crappest TV I've ever owned. My old dumb TV is better.
You can set the DNS on the TV to NextDNS to block the ads and tracking, so you can use the internet again.
It turns out I am not the only one who does not want a smart TV. The benefit for me is practically zero. All I need is a dumb TV/monitor/projector and the ability to plug it into a chromecast type of device/laptop.
Good news is that projectors are still dumb. Just input selector and picture settings.
I use an AppleTV connected to a 43-inch 4k monitor [1]. No crappy TV-software and it's a proper screen, with proper response-time to use for the laptop as well.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Monitor-Bdm4350uc-42-5in-3840...
Does that monitor support 12-bit HDR though?
Unfortunately no HDR support.
This is some bullshit. I would blackhole whatever fucking API they are using... just limit the incoming, but allow outgoing so their ad networks begin counting it as a non-shown ad.
Problem is that there is at least one smart TV that gets stuck in a boot loop when it goes to update it's ads and can't. Support in that case tells them to connect to the internet and it'll work (which ofcourse will grab the new batch of ads). There are plenty of other cases with smart TVs losing actual functionality when the server that serves ads is blocked and because it's an updateable service you can't really tell which smart TV will sting you.
you should stop your tv from making outbound calls. Many "smart tvs" are mining details on what you're watching and sending it back to the mothership, including conversations it may hear in the room, if your TV has voice activation features
You should disconnect your TV from the internet and not let it connect. Run a barebones version of Firestick (ideally with piHole) as it is constantly phoning home to Amazon. Roku is a popular alternative, but it too is constantly phoning home.
Two random articles, which includes coverage on the Samsung & Smart TV problem
https://www.cnet.com/news/samsungs-warning-our-smart-tvs-rec...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-wat...
Yes... but years of working in ads has made me realize that fucking with unfilled rates will cause a lot of grief to the company fucking me over... so I'm tempted to just tarpit the incoming data, not the outgoing one.
You should black hole smart TVs in general anyway for security.
This relates to Vizio[1] but it seems most manufactures are snooping on their customers.
1. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/02/vizio...
My Panasonic smart TV used to have an app for Hulu. It doesn't anymore. Same for a bunch of other apps. The app list is full of holes now.
One of the apps on my roku, which also is one of the "quick launch" buttons on the remote, was removed. Now I have a button on my remote that will forever be useless.
Better to have a dumb TV with chromecast.
It is. But how? Where'd you buy a dumb TV?
Can you not just not connect it to the network?
I hear that some smart TVs will seek out open Wifi networks and connect to them to get updates. So now your neighbours can (probably unknowingly) connect your smart TV to the internet for you.
That must be the device equivalent of finding a house with an unlocked door and going inside to rummage around their fridge and eat their food.
Am I now legally liable for my TV stealing the neighbour's internet?
Find a cooperative neighbour and sue the manufacturer?
Is pirating media the same as shoplifting a DVD from Best Buy?
You hear that they do, or that they could?
I tried to do something similar. I didn't want to accept Google's terms of service because of all the data collection, but since I wanted to cast to my TV from my devices, I had no other choice - the TV's interface would just not let me continue
Best bet is probably to get a computer monitor.
A 65-inch computer monitor is expensive.
My 55" is much more reasonable.
I recently bought a very cheap 4K RCA tv that has zero smart features. No networking at all. There is an undocumented USB port but if you plug a USB drive into it, it can browse the file system but can't play anything. It was on the very low end of the price range for a tv of its size and resolution. Maybe that's where to look. Time will tell how well it holds up but it's lasted six months so far.
In Australia after some "on the box" features were no longer applicable to the product I bought, I was able to refund the product.
This has worked for;
- Consumer devices (cloud support dropped within the lifetime of the device, features dropped likely as a cost saving measure to the manufacturer)
- Software (features removed or culled after buying)
- Smart TVs (claiming support for different platforms)
- Gaming consoles (OtherOS on PS3)
This usually hurts the retailer - they don't want to risk going after the manufacturer because they want to sell their products. I've been banned from buying from one store after returning a product and then posting about it publicly, many others returned as well when they realised it was possible - I can assume some took advantage of this fact as a "I paid full price for this 1.5 years ago, it's now worth 50% less, I can return it and buy a better model from somewhere else" endeavour.
I think the problem is that the "masses" would still buy the Oculus product as if nothing was wrong with it. From there, it's pretty difficult to convince people (e.g. a regulator or a judge) that your item is of no use to you anymore.
That's moving forward. This problem has as much to do with past expectations that changed as it does current expectations for the future.
PKD predicted this 50 years ago https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...
> Have we really given up basic consumer rights that easily?
Is there anything I can do as a mere consumer to lobby for my rights?
It's not just that, it's also the store. If you choose not to log with the Facebook ID, do I also lose access to all of my purchases? It seems extra scummy.
Good point, that being said market pressure can sometimes influence that.
Sonos was a hair short of bricking their old devices a few months ago, then backtracked after getting a lot of fire from their customers.
I'm wondering if this would be true for larger companies / acquisitions though. Would they have done the same if purchased by Google or Facebook?
Consumer protection laws generally lag behind these problems, so it might be premature to say we've given up. We have to know the problem exists, and then we have to go through the (slow) legislative process.
In a democracy laws always lag whatever the opinion of the majority is on the issue.
This same thing just happened to Belkin WeMo. Looking forward to the class action.
I bought a bunch of switches because the offered local control and no account needed, now an account is required to set up anything new and local control is apparently going away. I’m now wary of anything that needs a proprietary app at all which would give them the ability to do this in the first place.
I can recommend Sonoff switches and any bulb that runs ESP8266, you can usually easily flash those with open source firmware. I do it when I receive them, and they've been rock solid.
Nah, this is how laws are made. Someone keeps pushing the limits of what they can do to other people, then enough people have enough of it and push back, companies are fined, legislation is created, bs stops happening for a while. Same shit, different day (at least until we change the shit out of the climate/environment, heh).
How do we create laws for these contingencies? Should we list all the possible manners in which consumers shouldn't be screwed? Should we provide flexible guidelines?
It risks becoming a regulatory hell too for small developers to navigate. If regulation is weak, it risks becoming some pointless step in the way (a minor point in an EULA, or cookies-like popup) that people would ignore anyways. One way or the other, it's easy to spin as a feature: "Our VR set has a social focus (eg. we post your daily usage). For this, login in to you account is necessity". There. Now not only you need to log in, you are also publicly shamed for your usage just for them to save face.
Sadly, it boils down to human decency to make a human product.
I've always thought it was odd how they can advertise Google Assistant, Siri, etc.., as if it's some magical thing that understands everything you say, but in practice it's worse than useless. It gives you hope that it works, but it never does, it only frustrates you. In my experience, anyway.
> then completely alters the rules by which the device operates at an arbitrary point in time after the sell
You usually agree to a EULA that allows them to do that. If you cannot agree to the EULA then you return the product.
Now, I will give full credit that no one reads those, but Legality doesn't care if you fail to do due diligence.
You have some basic rights and an EULA, TOS or a contract cannot take those away (at least not in the EU). So no, that wouldn't cover a situation where a device is crippled later on. You'd have a right to get your money back.
I mean, then the easiest thing for companies to do would be to write "You agree that we can do anything we want with the device" into the EULA. As long as they behave reasonable in the near term and only go crazy after public attention has moved on, they'd probably get few customers to notice.
Sounds like something the EU will look at in the future if they aren't already.
it's a different world
sometimes things get bricked, other times they get new features for free
teslas couldn't self-drive and then, one OTA update later, they could
companies release security updates
society doesn't know how to regulate OTA; change is sometimes bad for users but not always.
Rights are something you need to constantly fight for, otherwise they absolutely will go away. Portland isn't just bored, they're ahead of the curve.
As someone who lives in PDX, owns an Oculus Rift and has always refused to have a Facebook account, I can only say that mass bitching appears to have done very little to change anything. Civil lawsuits are a better approach.
What’s the context of the Portland reference?
The US Fed govt sent unmarked, masked troops to Portland who then detained people without identifying themselves using rental vehicles and not disclosing why during the riots. Basically what happens during a kidnapping. Also I believe after mayor and governor ask them to leave. Not the first time in current events either.
Here's a follow up video that's more neutral and fact based compared to the other comment. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uglv-fV1CqI
You need internet to download games to your oculus quest, so it makes sense to have an account to keep track of what games you own no? I still don't understand what people have against this change. You needed an oculus account prior to this, now it's a facebook account, what's the big deal?
Really? I have never and will never have a facebook account, so this expensive device is now a paper weight..
> now
January 2023
Unless they want to sell it used, in which case the value tanks because starting October setting up an Oculus device requires a Facebook account. (And for that reason I stopped considering Oculus for my first headset)
Kinda absurd. You can setup a one time email, and one time facebook if you really want to segregate.
Sure you win on principle, but that's just the same as losing.
Actually you can't, because Facebook will lock your account for inauthentic behavior. Try making a fake account, and see how long you can hold on to it without being extorted for personal, identifiable information.
I set up a fake Facebook profile 10 years ago, because I needed a profile with no friends that I could use for testing some stuff at work. It is still alive and kicking; Facebook keeps sending it emails suggesting friends.
We can spend all day arguing anecdotes. As a counterpoint, I've never used Facebook, but once tried setting up an account to participate in a group event organized by some friends - by the next day, before I could even use the account, Facebook had locked my account, and wanted a photo of my ID to let me access the account. Needless to say, I abandoned the account.
The person who I replied to made a personal challenge to try creating a fake account, so I responded with my personal experience doing just that.
I was not making any claims about the likelihood of an account being banned.
same, I have a fake account and no issue with it
That won't probably work any more. I have a couple of old test accounts, can't create new ones without them being locked right away.
Kinda absurd. You can't setup a one time email, and one time facebook if you really don't want your movement online all linked to a government issued ID.
Sure you're sort of an idiot to make those assumptions, but I'm sure you already came to this realization about yourself years ago.
What if I'm too stupid to introspect?
Facebook account bans are often for absurd reasons and there is basically zero accountability. Post a pic that an algorithm flagged as a nude? No Oculus for 30 days and needing to send them a passport scan!
> You need internet to download games to your oculus quest, so it makes sense to have an account to keep track of what games you own no?
Not really. If they're downloaded, why would you need to look up remotely what you have locally.
Yeah, I thought the same thing too, in order to give the fake like/follow some artists require before making their music available to download; took 10 minutes, my account was banned for "suspicious activity" (meaning I didn't start posting pictures of myself like a pleb), and a government issued ID demanded of me. Fuck that
>it makes sense to have an account to keep track of what games you own no?
Not in the least
A very brief history of Facebook's involvement with Oculus and how this has shaped up, just from quickly searching HN previous posts:
- (2014) Facebook acquires Oculus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469115, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469237
- (2016) Oculus's privacy policy sparks concern: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11410809
Oculus responds to privacy concerns about user tracking (https://uploadvr.com/facebook-oculus-privacy/) saying
> Facebook owns Oculus and helps run some Oculus services, such as elements of our infrastructure, but we’re not sharing information with Facebook at this time. We don’t have advertising yet and Facebook is not using Oculus data for advertising – though these are things we may consider in the future.
- (2019) If logged into Facebook, Oculus data may be used for ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21770752
From their official statement:
> If you choose not to log into Facebook on Oculus, we won’t share data with Facebook to allow third parties to target advertisements to you based on your use of the Oculus Platform.
- (2020): Facebook accounts are now required.
None of this is particularly surprising, lots of people (even in the press) were calling out how this was going to evolve. But it's still interesting to look back 6 years and see what the initial reactions were and what people were most concerned about.
The takeaways:
- data silos are always temporary
- companies think on a larger timeline than just 2 years in advance
- this kind of thing nearly always gets executed as a slow boil. Facebook didn't buy Oculus and immediately require an account and start advertising to users. But I don't believe for one second that Mark wasn't thinking it at the time.
But did Facebook add any value (i.e. engineering money/hours) to improve the device? What you've listed are all negatives, but there have to be at least a few positives to come out of it.
I suppose.
But at the same time, for any new users who value their own privacy the device is now pretty useless, and for any existing users who value their privacy but also want to be up-to-date and get new features, they're also probably going to be locked out in future updates.
So you kind of have to excuse them for focusing on the negatives, because they don't get to enjoy the positives. It's kind of a moot point for them what Facebook brought to the table.
This is always the concern with these kinds of purchases, and I think this was a big part of the concern back in 2014. I was never worried that Facebook wouldn't invest in Oculus, as a consumer I was worried that it would ruin the Oculus ecosystem and shove dystopian adware onto the devices.
The vast majority of those users likely also have a Facebook, Instagram, and/or Whatsapp account.
Without Facebook's funding, none of the recent advancements are likely to exist in the first place. Valve hasn't done it, HTC hasn't done it, Sony hasn't done it. Because it is hard, expensive, and a money losing endeavor (for the forseeable future).
To be clear, I am strongly against the requirement, but am glad the product exists.
I'm not saying there aren't positives, I'm saying that it's understandable why users who now need to choose between a peripheral and their privacy are having a hard time focusing on those positives.
I'm also not too cynical about the market, because thankfully there are multiple companies in this space who are making progress. So Facebook will trash Oculus and things will stink for a while.
Eventually somebody else will come along and offer the same functionality without feeling the need to create a user-hostile platform out of a peripheral. Eventually the Linux support will improve. Eventually some community group will take over WebVR and we'll get a general platform instead of a bunch of separate stores designed to increase user lock-in. Eventually the games will be disassociated from the peripherals. Eventually, we'll get what we want and the space will improve. And Facebook's early efforts to improve the raw tech will be a part of that story.
But in the meantime, for the people who were predicting what Facebook was going to do from the moment Oculus was acquired -- I think it's reasonable to step back and let them say, "we told you so."
Without Facebook's capital and Zuckerberg's commitment to VR, I doubt the Quest would exist. That project was announced in 2016 and was likely in development for a couple of years before that. Still it took until mid-2019 to be released to the public. IIRC, Carmack said that development on the Go was started after the Quest, yet the Go went to market a year sooner. I can only imagine what kind of hell it was to get a 2016 phone SoC to do VR with 6DOF inside-out tracking.
Lenovo did it before the Go released (or about the same). It was kind of gimped because they went with the Daydream controller instead of full controllers but the headset itself was roomscale VR. It was also bigger and not as comfortable but worked on a previous gen SOC to the Quest. Check out the Lenovo Mirage Solo.
Since it only had two front-facing cameras, the Mirage Solo would have required extra hardware to track any controllers. Also I don't think there was ever an app for it that let you walk two steps away from the origin. The only truly room scale thing I saw was a demo written by some developers. They had to put the headset in dev mode and disable a bunch of safety mechanisms. I wonder if this limitation was imposed to minimize drift.
I developed on it and the limitation was mostly self imposed for safety/perf reasons. Its much easier to draw a consistent roomscale boundary on the Quest with the 6DOF controller. Without that its a real UX problem. Even the Quest is constantly asking to redraw the boundary. It was one of two SOC generations (as well as VR SDK gens) earlier and it was quite hard to build out a full room without a lot of perspective tricks.
There was an experimental add on for 6DOF controllers https://developers.google.com/vr/experimental/6dof-controlle...
It really wasn't a fundamental technical leap to go from the Mirage to a Quest. The Quest feels like a (well thought out) iteration instead of a revolution compared to the Mirage Solo.
Tracking controllers in 6DOF from headset cameras is the hardest part. Nobody has yet replicated this for a stand-alone headset.
Why do you say its the hardest part? Hand gesture tracking is quite hard, but tracking IR LEDs on a controller is much easier than tracking head motion as long as you have the camera setup to keep them in view.
Did they really need Facebook's capital? The market was absolutely flooded with VC money, Magic Leap raised almost $3B since then.
and did nothing, Oculus didn't just need money, but a competent team behind it.
This isn't correct. There were/are a lot of inside out VR headsets. Oculus just happens to have a brand, a solid marketing presence, a solid product, the appearance of longevity etc.
Facebook might have helped but from a purely technical perspective, Facebook wasn't the only path.
What standalone 6DOF headset with 6DOF controllers existed in the market in 2019 besides the Quest? Or now? I certainly can’t think of one?
The Lenovo Mirage Solo had 6DOF tracking with the Daydream controller. It had an experimental 6DOF controller add on but Google killed Daydream before that shipped. Inside out PC headsets exist with the camera setup for 6DOF inside out.
Currently the Quest is the only Android based (and thus fully stand alone) headset that's wasn't Daydream branded and wasn't killed when Google mothballed their VR support. There's less now then there were, or would have been if Google stuck with it.
How about Pico’s line of devices?
“ Neo 2/Neo 2 Eye is available for businesses only. Please fill out this form if you are interested in ordering the Neo 2/Neo 2 Eye and we will get back to you once stock is available.”
Ah, didn’t see that bit, but at least we know the tech exists beyond Oculus’ labs.
sorry but no, what Oculus has is a team of strong engineers
Actually, not really. Inside out tracking runs on one core of my ancient AMD FX 6350 well enough. It was very doable.
Your ancient desktop CPU is powerful compared to Snapdragon 835 on Oculus Quest.
My ancient CPU is actually slower corewise than a Snapdragon 835. It's embarrassingly slow, about as fast as the first i5, if that. The snapdragon 835 is almost twice as fast as it corewise, actually.
Still outperforming on most of benchmarks. https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2817815 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/3344943
> But did Facebook add any value (i.e. engineering money/hours) to improve the device? What you've listed are all negatives, but there have to be at least a few positives to come out of it.
Can't help but think of this comic: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
I think it's closer to 'What did the Romans do for us? Besides the roads, clean water, ...'
there have to be at least a few positives to come out of it.
Why does this have to be true at all? Let bad things be bad, and deal with them. Don't try to rationalize away problems.
I don't have the financials, but I expect that after spending $2 billion for the acquisition, they didn't live them alone.
One notable thing is that Oculus hired Michael Abrash just following the announcement of the acquisition. With John Carmack, who was already there, they are among the most (if not the most) prominent developers in the field. Even though Carmack stepped down as a CTO, both are still there. I have stopped following VR news but Oculus had pretty nice prototypes a few years ago which combined eye tracking, foveated rendering and varifocal lenses, all addressing fundamental problems with the current generation of headsets.
Also, even though I am not sure about Facebook involvement, they financed some of the best VR games at the time. Lone Echo is one of them. Ready At Dawn, the developer is now part of Oculus Studio, a branch of Oculus focused on making VR content. Note that having good VR content is extremely important, even more so than the devices themselves. I mean, you are not going to spend hundreds of dollars just to slash cubes, or maybe you do, can't blame you ;)
Those positives turn to negatives if you care about privacy - they help Oculus muscle privacy-respecting alternatives out of the market.
Of course you first need to fatten an animal before you slaughter it.
I think Facebook worked as a king maker, giving Oculus enough financial backing to be a trusted (ironic) platform. Were they the only option? No idea.
Sure there are, for Facebook shareholders.
That's one side of the story, the Quest wouldn't exist without Facebook
Sure, it'd be called something different and would be made by someone else. It's not like FB started Oculus from scratch. Worst case it would've just taken a little longer while some other player with the capital got around to being interested.
The use case drove the tech, not the company, and so far the tech is being used for exactly what it was used for before FB bought it (just better as computers, motion sensors, and cameras got better). There was nothing transformative there.
I don't think FB deserves any credit other than being in the right place at the right time. Now they're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Props for wireless 6DOF before anyone else, and I love my Quest, but now that the trail is blazed and they aren't being maintaining their (yes, their--Palmer worked for them too) promises to the community, they can sit down.
> The use case drove the tech
Eh. The money drove the tech - Facebook can afford to dump money into Oculus despite there being very little use cases or consumer appetite for it.
> Sure, it'd be called something different and would be made by someone else
interestingly you can say that about pretty much anything, but at some point someone need to work on it for "it" to happen.
Both can be true.
It can be true that Facebook heavily invested into the Quest and it can be true that their user-hostile moves over the past 6 years were all utterly predictable, even though company heads ran around telling their critics that they were being unreasonable and paranoid.
This is true for many tech products and industries.
Apple and Google have both invested huge amounts of money and resources into building voice assistants into general consumer services. They deserve credit for that. They also deserve criticism for stifling the markets around voice assistants, building walled gardens that hamper innovation in the space, and for general privacy violations along the way. And it is, once again, completely predictable what the end goals are for companies like Google in regards to voice assistants and augmented reality -- regardless of what their company spokespeople might be saying today.
It can be true that Chrome unambiguously moved the web forward as a platform, and that without Google's involvement the modern web would not have the potential that it has today. And it can simultaneously be true that Google's long-term corporate vision for the web is toxic, and that there are serious concerns to be had about Chrome continuing to maintain a dominant browser position.
The point is, I don't think acknowledging Facebook's investment in the Oculus means that it's good to ignore the obvious downsides of their involvement. I think it's good to look at what people were worried would happen, and to see that it did happen. That doesn't mean you need to disregard Facebook's investment, and it doesn't mean that Oculus shouldn't exist -- it's just giving you a broader perspective that sometimes these positive investments also come with serious tradeoffs that aren't always acknowledged up-front.
I don't understand what value FB gets from VR device data. I have never understood the acquisition, but that point in particular has never been clear.
Or is it just that the end goal is to advertise in VR, and the acquisition was a grasp at a dystopian daydream?
VR has the potential to reveal more about you than normal browsing history. The device knows what you are looking at (sometimes including eye tracking) and for how long. This is extremely valuable.
Fuck. Forgot eye tracking. How long you look at an ad, Where you look on the ad.
Neuro-marketing that scales. Yummy.
Reminds me of Ready Player One, where the big bad gloated over the possibility of filling up to 70% of the visual field with ads, before the user collapses in epilepsy.
My guess is elevated application running on the PC. If they could push a desktop facebook client with admin permissions, they would in a heartbeat
Well this is horrifying. I bought a Quest for a relative. He loves it, but he doesn't have a Facebook account, and has no interest in signing up. I have a Facebook account, but I don't use it, and I certainly don't want to connect my Oculus account. I guess we'll both have to sell our Quests. That means we'll lose all of our game purchases.
I came to Oculus with eyes wide open knowing it was a Facebook company, but this news still sucks.
If you make a Facebook account and never touch the Facebook aspect of it, is there any material difference between that and an Oculus account?
A better question: why does a VR headset require an account at all? Should my monitor require an account? Should my keyboard?
It's a peripheral, not a platform.
Not sure if you know what device you're talking about. The Oculus Quest is very much a platform, not a "peripheral". There's no device that the Quest connects to to be used as a peripheral. It's a completely stand alone computing device that serves as a platform for third party software, the same as your phone which requires an account.
Nothing in the announcement limits this to the Quest. It says Oculus "devices" including peripherals. What is the justification for requiring an account to use a peripheral that you plug into your computer?
Even if it were just the Quest: How is it reasonable to require an account to use a "stand alone computing device"? I have many stand alone computing devices in my home without the need for an account with their manufacturers.
I was already skeptical of my Oculus Rift when after buying it I learned I needed to create an account just to download drivers (WTF!) No other device on my computer requires an account to obtain drivers. I would love to hear the justification.
I'm not sure I follow this line of thought. Without an account, what would all the game purchases you make be associated with? What about friends lists? Support requests? The Oculus, and the vision for the product, is more akin to consoles than it is your run-of-the-mill PC.
I disagree.
Take oculus Rift as an example. You own a game (on a different platform) which supports VR (including your device). You plug your Rift in, calibrate the sensors/room and start playing the game. You shouldn't even need internet connection.
For support requests, use the serial number, like everywhere else.
Consoles work offline just fine.
>I would love to hear the justification.
"We require you create an account so that we can protect your personal data."
I know the blog post refers to "Oculus devices" and does not in any way imply that the account is required only for the Quest. I agree that the Quest is not the same as their other headsets. I disagree that any of these should require an account.
Not the OP, but I was wondering the same thing. I also don't know which devices I'm talking about.
The thing is: to sell me stuff, you don't need to know my name. You don't need to keep tabs on me. You may offer it, but I may decline. Plenty of mortar-and-bricks-stores work this way: there are loyalty cards for tracking, but customers who forego them do not have to register to make a purchase.
Point in fact: there are also internet shops that allow such options. Sure, they need a bit of data to send the parcel and the confirmation/invoice/etc. But that doesn't require everyone to create a username/password combination - and some internet shops blissfully do not require that. They get paid and ship the purchase to the address specified, and that's it.
In this case, it seems purchases could be tied to the Oculus device specified during the purchase. While I can certainly imagine benefits to tying purchases to a user account (e.g., ability to use on multiple Oculus devices), I don't see a reason to require logging in. Am I overlooking something?
> In this case, it seems purchases could be tied to the Oculus device specified during the purchase. While I can certainly imagine benefits to tying purchases to a user account (e.g., ability to use on multiple Oculus devices), I don't see a reason to require logging in. Am I overlooking something?
If (when) the device fails, you would lose all of its associated software licenses and have to buy them again
Considering how TVs can come with bloat, accounts and build advertising these days I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up needing an account for your monitor.
I mean, my Nvidia card has had one for years because I didn’t realise I could’ve installed the drivers without creating one. What did a graphics card ever need with that? My mouse required one.
It used to work to start the Nvidia installer, let it unpack (other unpacking tools could most likely extract the archive as well) its contents, exit it and instead let Windows search the unpacked files for the correct driver by using the Windows driver selection dialog.
I'm not sure if this still works or if there are other things beside the driver that one would like to have installed nowadays.
Unfortunately things have been moving this way, even for peripherals such as mice:
https://insider.razer.com/index.php?threads/i-need-an-accoun...
The amount of people defending Razer is incredible. They fully buy the idea that internet connection and accounts are necessary to use a mouse, or simple features like changing the dpi.
You want it to be a peripheral, Facebook wants it to be a platform.
I would call Oculus Rift as "just VR headset" but Oculus Quest would be reasonable to call as "standalone VR computer", not peripheral. Is requiring account for a "computer" reasonable is another question.
Well, both Linux and Windows let you have offline accounts (though the latter heavily discourages it, and I can’t speak for macOS), so there’s precedent in the desktop world for that functionality. Of course, why would Facebook bother to support it?
Maybe FB wants to collect data from sensors, and other type of usage?
They can do that without an FB account, Instagram and WhatsApp certainly funnel data into a shared storage that FaceBook can read too without me specifically connecting the accounts.
I'm sure this just changes which pipe usage data goes down, but this means Facebook directly gets to use your VR usage/purchases to market to you, and they will follow you around the web, because they know. I think that's the main reason folks generally dislike FB connect in the first place, but I don't want to speak for everyone :)
How is that different from an Oculus account, though? FB could keep the accounts separate but still funnel data in from Oculus to FB (as I'm sure they'd already been doing). If you create a throwaway FB account just for your Oculus device, the only material difference is which DB the entry is in.
when you sign up to facebook i bet their ToS is much different than Oculus'
That's my point around changing the pipes. I think it's still meaningfully different though, because there are probably some first party benefits of going directly through FB, but that's speculation.
> this means Facebook directly gets to use your VR usage/purchases to market to you, and they will follow you around the web
Only if you use or log into your bogus FB account.
Having your IP address is identifiable enough (combined with all the other joys of big data) to Facebook and its marketing wing, so don't feel too confident, but if you don't care, then that's kind of the point.
I mean at this point... seeing ads on VR instead of toothpaste might be a win
Wondering if creating burning accounts for everything would prevent any tracking. Basically
- create burner gmail
- create burner oculus name/account
- create burner Facebook account
- always use a VPN
It seems like you could completely remain anonymous and provide Facebook with data they could never correlate to a real person.
What do VPN help if you have Facebook firmware on your computer? You also need to never play with friends with the Rift online, or let them borrow your Wifi, etc. If you have Facebook apps or hardware you leak fingerprinting bits. The Rift has bluetooth for the controllers right? Better put it in a Farradays cage because your neighbors will rat on you to Zuckerberg.
There is no having a tiny bit of Facebook. If you give them a finger ...
Did you try to make a burner Facebook account? I tried doing this since my client needed something to be verified through FB and I don't have an account.
After initial login I was asked to verify myself by either providing ID (sic!) or a phone number.
Well, seems that after 2023 I'll just trash my Quest.
Whoa really? I deleted my Facebook in 2014, so I had no idea they actually did ID verification. If this is the case I guess you could spin up a burner number on Twilio, but this seems like a lot of work to go through. I have a Quest and will likely try these steps, but no way will I ever give Facebook my real identity.
Yep, I’ve had exactly the same thing happen to me. You might be able to delay it slightly if you use an email address they have in their records from other users (i.e. an email address some of your friends have stored for you in their contacts they’ve shared with Facebook). Set up a new gmail / Hotmail account they have no trace of existing before, the red flags go up and it will almost certainly get you to verify with some form of government ID, real phone number or possibly both.
I’ve supported Oculus since DK1 through every single iteration of hardware. This change by Facebook has just killed the brand entirely for me. I simply won’t sign up / back into Facebook (killed my account around 2011 as I found it overwhelmingly toxic and have never looked back) to use a piece of hardware I already purchased.
I had reason to try to create an FB burner account not so long ago, but I couldn't get through into any worthwhile practical use without providing photo ID, despite giving them actual pristine phone numbers on every try. My guess is they force it upon every identity where they don't already have linkability from phone books they've snooped through, and the like.
If you're logged into the account on your computer, sure. Just make sure you either make all purchase on-device, or log into Oculus in a private window.
Facebook tracks you even when you're logged out btw.
You'll need a separate ip address for each device then correct?
Not sure, does facebook just assume that everyone connecting from behind a NAT is the same person?
That seems like it could go poorly, like if one person in a household had been buying a secret birthday present or an engagement ring or researching divorce lawyers and then the targeted ads were associated to everyone in the house.
The definitely assume it's the same person. I get advertising clearly targeted at other people on my internet connection (eg. ads for property in a certain suburb, when I don't even actively look at property while another family member does).
There's much more than IP adress that's used to track you. Companies like facebook use all the forms of browser storage, browser fingerprinting, etc.
Forcing users to violate their personal moral principles, upon which the decision of never using anything related to Facebook rests, is a big enough difference for many--myself included.
EDIT: I didn't know that Facebook bought Oculus some time ago, back in 2014--for some reason I thought it happened far more recently. I would make the case above for someone who had bought an Oculus device before Facebook's acquisition and now would be forced to use its platform, then. I don't have anything to do with Facebook, personally. I don't even use WhatsApp, so there's that for my moral integrity.
At the point that you've given money to facebook when you bought their product, haven't you already done that?
>haven't you already done that?
Fortunately, I haven't.
Then you already have a problem with using an Oculus device regardless of what sort of account you can sign in with, they've owned Oculus since 2014
That's right, I didn't know. Well, rephrase that to a less radical standpoint, then: "upon which the decision of not wanting to use Facebook rests".
In any case, I personally have never owned an Oculus or anything related to Facebook.
So what if they'd buy Vive next?
You burn your Vive device to the ground and implore the Gods to rid humanity from the Zucc.
I'm not sure if you mean "an oculus account owned by Facebook anyway" - but in general terms I'd be somewhat surprised if a "real" game/software/service company (eg: Nintendo, gog.com) kept quasi-/il-legal shadow profiles that they actively tried to pair with your account.
On Facebook you're required to use your real name. I don't know if the same is true of an Oculus account, but that's a major difference if not. Of course you can create a Facebook account with a fake name, but then you risk getting banned.
I have a quest and just used a handle in the Oculus account creation. There was no demand for a real name at all. So yes, it's a big change.
Can you do so without accepting their terms of service? They use every data source they can to build profiles for people so accepting the ToS is going to approve use of your information for as much as they can get away with.
I do not like the idea that I need a social media account to use a VR headset, regardless of the realities of using the oculus account data still ending up with facebook.
because every action you perform within the account that signs into the FB account becomes a parcel of information you're giving to FB.
If you sign in to one of their accounts, you are functionally signing into the facebook website.
What if you are not allowed to make a FB account due to their TOS? Not everyone can be on FB.
As a VR developer I'm really sad to hear this news. I've always been against the walled garden approach. I feel like it's only a matter of time before they block SideQuest.
However - supposedly your oculus account will be valid until the end of 2022 [0]. At that point you could change to a newer hardware platform from another manufacturer.
[0] https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-facebook-account-required-ne...
He'll still lose access to all games he owns on the Oculus store.
Just make a burner Facebook account. You can do so with a burner email. Annoying, but not horrifying.
When you make a facebook account disconnected from a social graph (new email, or unused phone number) facebook shuts down the account.
Their position is clear. They’re fucking creeps masquerading any user experience they create as anti-spam.
I made a burner account to be able to login into certain sites that requires fb login. After 2 months without a phone number they disabled it, and since my email was also a burner they removed it. I had then to create an actual email account, and give them my phone number (I don't have a burner number) to be able to activate the account again. Besides my phone number, nothing else is real in there, even my profile image is from one of those "this person does not exist" sites.
Your phone number is probably already verified by being caught in their net from your friends and relatives. I assume it'd be a different situation with a burner number.
Is this confirmed? I made a second account at one point with a new email and have had zero issues with both. Although I rarely log into the first one, maybe once a month or so.
Facebook has banned multiple burner account of mine, so I suppose it is confirmed.
It's still connected to the graph if you have another account accessed from the same IP. They know there's a connection from that account to yours.
Don't create a burner account. Facebook's TOS is to lock burners and require an ID to unlock, so you'd be locking all your games out of access.
Again, I've had and technically logged into both accounts concurrently for at least the past 3-5 years. So unless this only applies to new accounts, I have yet to have either one locked out.
That's why I was wondering if it's officially confirmed somewhere.
This isn’t a 3-5 year old phenomenon.
I don’t think there are many people that are cognizant in how to break their social graph.
I’ve seen a few other hackernews comments corroborating it over the past year. But it isn't a common case so Facebook gets away with it.
You can sue them. I think this is what it will take. I've got an orphaned GOG account that they are not responding to me about, and I am definitely entitled to access those games.
True. It's all within your rights. I'm just trying to say they really don't like burners and won't make it easy to go that route. (If I had to guess)
You sue; they restore access to moot the lawsuit, but then tie your real info listed on the suit to your account, no longer making it anonymous. Win-win? /sarc
No, you could probably sue for access that does not need an account esp. if they have gravely changed the terms since you signed up.
They're going to lose their games if they don't make any account anyway. So if they feel strongly about not making a proper account, they might as well try with a burner one and see how long it lasts?
Just rewatching "Person of Interest" and came across "Finch" casually remarking that he invented social networking in order to increase the quality of data gleaned from his totalitarian surveillance machine... (specifically to fill in the social graph data...).
It makes sense... we've sold our data for the ability to tell 'Alexa set a timer'
The society at large was akin to natives of an undeveloped land being preyed upon by an advanced civilization. They were offered glass beads and trinkets, "a mirror to amuse yourself with, your highness!". And society at large behaved precisely as the historic natives.
I think for some service which for some reason had just FB signup I made a burner FB account and locked in all the privacy settings, I was thrown out of the account in under an hour. It kept asking for phone number which I didn't want to give.
They don't. You can have stand alone accounts. All you need to do is follow a few things like a beer company, car comapny or some other faceless corp.
Job done. raise the noise floor.
Yeah, if you forget to do that within a day you are locked out forever.
So they're effectively saying you can't use Oculus gear if you don't have any friends (on social media).
I've had a burner FB account for years and have never had an issue. What's your source for this?
I tried, in vain, to create a FB account using my work email address sometime after 2010 and FB demanded verification by SMS.
I ended up using my personal email address because that's how they want it.
yeah thats not actually true.
My mum has a shadow facebook account for a number of reasons. She only has one friend, its on a shadow email. It's still active after a good 6 months.
it didn't require a phone number either. I mean it asked, but I didn't give it one.
So long as the emails dont bounce, you're good.
> So long as the emails dont bounce, you're good.
Simply not true. I suggest you try yourself and see how long the account stays unlocked.
> My mum has a shadow facebook account for a number of reasons. She only has one friend, its on a shadow email. It's still active after a good 6 months.
I mean I don't know how I can make it any clearer....
Well this is a pointless discussion. I've tried it and can just repeat myself, try it yourself and see your new burner account locked. I've no insight to how and when your mom created her accounts.
just because she got on the left side of the A/B test doesn't invalidate our experiences
Create a social graph of creeps only
In which case you buy a verified fake account and move on.
Sometimes Facebook requires a photo ID to be submitted before "approving" a new account. Seems to happen when they suspect the person isn't real (fake name, or whatever).
My grandpa accidentally used a phone number to register when he was trying to log in. His original account got promptly locked and for months they would periodically lock it. He had to provide ID proof every time.
I don't use Facebook, but I totally recognize how valuable it is for my grandpa. Sadly, Facebook does not allow any mistakes to be made on its site, which is what older people tend to do when faced with new tech.
FWIW it's quite simple to make fake IDs that pass FB verification. Not that I support making FB accounts, even fraudulent ones. I'd like to see a class action privacy suit, because in conjunction with their real names policy, FB is forcing identity disclosure simply to use hardware.
I just tried and failed: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1295835462360338436
I used a realistic sounding name, I tried several email addresses that were rejected as blocked, eventually I landed on an email that worked and my account got immediately disabled.
I'm sure I could eventually succeed, but I don't believe that it's fair to brush this off as something that anybody could do easily.
Your tweet indicates that you were stopped by the "government ID required" hoop. I've been there. I'm no graphics design wizard, but I foiled this by (1) taking a photograph of my actual government ID, (2) copying letters around to spell the name I'm known by, (3) applying some noise and blur filters (4) downsampling, and (5) redacting all PII except name & face. Compared to making an actual fake ID, I call this quite simple.
I imagine that you could use a plausible but fake name and a plausible but fake "random person" image, but I'm not interested in actually interacting with that website enough to try.
You might try a clean OS & browser install, to avoid trackers, and maybe if you've been banned a bunch already, use a VPN (or stop using a VPN) or use Starbucks wifi or something.
That is, admittedly, a lot of work, even if it does bypass this absurd requirement.
I don't recommend or use that shit website anymore, so the simple solution is stop doing the thing that's hurting you... but if you really need it for some reason then putting ~30min into making a fake id might be worthwhile.
No. I'm not going to give them what they want. There needs to be a lawsuit.
Not possible. I tried doing that once, and Facebook demanded I give them my phone number, which I obviously denied.
You can make a burner email account that doesn't track you around the web, and other places.
Is it possible to do that with a Facebook account?
if you're not logged into it in the browser, it can't follow you around
Not entirely true. If you've logged in at all, and didn't purge your cookies and local storage, they might still be tracking you everywhere you visit.
third party cookies allowed means they can follow you around logged in or out. They can also follow you around by your fingerprint (IP+various browser info bits that uniquely identify you)
not good enough. maybe if you only play solo games, but once you play with others facebook will get enough data to get an idea, if not identify who you really are. you may get tagged by your friends or family, connected to a location, etc, many ways to leak personal information. the only way to stay safe is to not log in to facebook
If you're in a country with half-decent consumer protections, you ought to be able to return the device, as it no longer functions as sold.
Or, if you bought it with a credit card, you can request a charge back. Depending on the card, doing that even 12 months after purchase is possible.
Which country is that?
Australia for one. I returned my Ring camera when they removed the customisable motion detection zones and it no longer worked as advertised (to this day, many months later) on their own website.
I think you'd have a pretty good case in the UK too - the device is no longer fit for the purposes for which it was sold, and a user could point towards Lucky's statement as a company representation as to what the product was sold for.
I've had a Rift for several years now. I haven't had a Facebook account in far longer.
I've also spent a bit of money on Rift games. This is angering.
That's exactly why I went for the Rift S instead and bought all my games through Steam. So I can sell that piece of plastic and get something not feom Oculus.
You don't have any contact info in your profile, but if you're serious, I already have a Facebook account that I use daily so I don't care much.
I'll buy one of them from you for $300 or the pair for $500. That seems like the going price? Contact is in my profile, let me know.
$300? Damn, why did I just buy a new one for $600 :(
EDIT: Oh, it's $399 retail in the US. Damn Europe.
> ... but he doesn't have a Facebook account,...
Not that he knows. https://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-a...
so here i am wondering if facebook would be challenged by a constant flood of anonymous [off graph] accounts constantly flooding in. how many 3card monte accounts per second would be required to keep the account verifier demon flooded
I'm interested in buying it from you if this is actually the case.
I'm in a similar boat. I purchase a Quest a while back (unaware of the Facebook affiliation), and really enjoy it. I can't see myself using it again after this, however.
Do we expect Joey Beercan to know who the explicit owner of any company selling us a product? Is it their fault for not knowing? Is that really fair if that is the expectation?
The parent's downvotes makes it seem like HN expects the purchaser to know about the FB affiliation
A tad hyperbolic, don't you think?
nope.
FB can not be trusted. I'd argue they should be dismantled.
Time after time they have not only expressed views that are downright alarming but they have been actively repeatedly caught out deliberately flaunting the law and fucking their customers. (not to mention their Russian connections and their part in the election tampering in the US).
Google are a naught boy compared to the actively evil FB org.
It may not take effect until 2023.
How hard is it to create a facebook account?
It's literally impossible, in case you haven't tried recently.
If you don't want to send them a government issued photo ID, you can make a new account that lasts 10 minutes and then is locked on you and holds any accounts linked to it hostage as you can't sign in.
> literally impossible
come on
What happens if you were banned from Facebook (for example political censorship or other possible reasons I can't think of off the top of my head)? Is your Oculus device bricked and useless? I'm a fan of Oculus, but this is a bit of a turn off. But I guess if Apple makes their own VR headset, they probably require an Apple account but Apple isn't really a social network so feel less of a risk, same for Microsoft's Mixed Reality headsets too I'd imagine.
Then your purchases and stuff are lost too, I guess as WebXR matures though maybe there will be some great apps you can just pay directly for on the web, but I feel like if rumors of Apple making a headset they'll just skip WebXR and force the app store... I know other headsets including the Oculus supports WebXR but sorta feels like it's a conflict of interest to their own stores to me so wonder how much more advanced it'll get.
Apple is now using the notarization system on desktop to ban apps from companies that broke iOS App Store rules, so you could for instance get your drone strike death toll app that was making a political statement taken down and lose your desktop notarization (which was supposed to be about security only) on a totally unrelated app in retaliation.
Yeah seen that Apple is doing that for Epic's Fortnight. Won't be able to sign for Mac, but people could still install it if they turn off gatekeeper which I doubt many people would mess with, been a while since I've done that myself since I use dev tools. I think now on Catalina and newer Mac versions even more steps. Used to be a checkbox, but I think you have to use the terminal now?
Never really worked with Unreal but wonder if this will affect other games using their engine, not sure if there's like signed dylibs and stuff.
All this security stuff is cool but in a way more control. It's like you paid all this money for something but in a way you don't really own it. Like some graphic card company sells graphic cards including server graphic cards, but their driver's EULA doesn't allow you to use your desktop cards for server use. I guess the hardware being used 24/7 wasn't designed for that, but sounds like they should deny your warranty then instead of turning it into a copyright issue. Some game streaming company ran into this problem.
If you Option-click an app, it gives you the option to run the app even if it's not signed. No disabling of Gatekeeper required.
Discoverability for that is hell, though. If you don't already know about it from a friend, finding out your app isn't a virtual paperweight requires going down a knowledgebase rabbit hole: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24217116
Oh yeah right click open too. I’ve done that before but thought maybe I’ve disabled Gatekeeper in the past on my machine.
VR adult games is a growing genre. These are real time games and as the tech gets better they can be much more engaging than a static video.
If Apple's device can't run them will that be significant in their adoption?
On topic, it's a reason not to own an FB VR device as I really don't want FB knowing which apps I run (nor do I want Apple knowing which apps I run for that matter)
oh yeah heard VR Porn is a thing haha, never looked into it. Then remember hearing that the VCR won because the porn industry liked it more. I got a feeling Apple will ban those sort of apps unless they support WebXR... but kinda like with iOS PWA and other APIs support is lacking a bit in Safari compared to Android or Chrome. I know there's concerns Apple will dump WebGL since they deprecated OpenGL, but they should be able to create a shim on top of the metal APIs, since that was done for DirectX on Windows.
This creates a chilling effect which puts my first ammendment rights at risk as an American, and it should be (and probably is if anyone actually bothered to correctly interpret the law anymore) illegal.
Facebook is a private corporation. The first amendment has no bearing on how Facebook decides to operate their business.
We're talking about an open social platform which half the world's population uses, so it's effectively a public space and the fact that a simple political opinion could be enough to cancel my account means that when hundreds of dollars are on the line, my voice may be effectively silenced.
It's a huge problem and even if you don't realize it now, it is going to be a huge political issue in the future.
And it has a simple solution, albeit an unsavory one to many of America's more free-market minded persons: If they are effectively a public space, then nationalize them and make it official.
That will never happen. The politician that sets it up will be voted out in the next election and everything he's done will be undone. Even as progressive as I am I will never vote for anyone who wants to nationalize a private company. That's what the CCP does, not America.
If America is unwilling to stomach nationalizing a private company, but will stomach privatizing a previously public domain, where do you think that's going to land us?
That doesn’t make it a first amendment problem. There’s only one legal case where private property was ruled to be subject to the 1st amendment - a company town where even the roads and sidewalks were owned by the company.
In contrast, if you don’t want to use or get banned from facebook, you can still communicate via SMS/MMS, google chat, email, GnuSocial/ActivityPub, twitter, and dozens of other options.
Actually, banning companies from moderating is probably a first amendment problem in the opposite direction - you’re forcing them to associate with you.
I agree with everything you said, but the fact remains that the US constitution defines what the US government can do, and Facebook is not a part of the US government. The first amendment does not have anything to do with the policies Facebook may choose to create and enforce on their private platform.
It's not that simple, and I hate it when it's inconsistent.
For example, even in the US, courts have established that Twitter is a public forum with respect to what politicians (such as Trump) say. But do other people get such protections?
In my country, Romania, the supreme court declared that Facebook is a public space, so if you say something like "the police can blow me" you'll get a letter from the police telling you so show up at the station so that they can fine you (swearing is illegal in Romania).
But Facebook can take down something I can say in public, meaning I'm not allowed free speech. It's not fair that I suffer all the consequences of a "public space", but none of the rights.
For example, even in the US, courts have established that Twitter is a public forum with respect to what politicians (such as Trump) say
IANAL but the court said Trump couldn't block you from his twitter account because his use of his feed made it a public forum. This was about Trump, not twitter. Twitter, AFAIK, wasn't forced to unblock the accounts trump had blocked.
This has zero to do with the 1st amendment. That is between you and the government. You have not such 1st amendment rights when dealing with a private company. All you can do with facebook is either do as they tell you, or drop them. There's not much middle ground.
And at one time, the 1st amendment didn't even exist. Then, the argument was, "You don't even have freedom of speech, so don't bother". Just wait and see, eventually a case will reach the Supreme Court which will make us finally face facts that you can only blur the lines so much when dealing with private companies operating large-scale and general social platforms. After a certain point, it's a public forum and your rights should be equally protected if Facebook is to operate in your jurisdiction.
>What happens if you were banned from Facebook
Your social credit goes down, of course
This was the reason I bought an HTC Vive instead of a Rift; I never trusted that this would hold. I recently considered buying a Quest. I won't ever consider that again.
Don't support Facebook ever, they don't deserve it.
Incidentally here is a comment I made recently about the bullshit they pulled on my wife and I relating to creating a business listing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959088
The SteamVR ecosystem is just so much nicer. I trust them far more than any of the alternatives. OpenVR for example has lead to many fantastic tools.
I didn't know much about Steam before I bought the VIVE and yes, it's actually a very nice platform. One thing that isn't apparent - you can return any game for a full refund within a certain (fair) amount of time owned and/ or you don't exceed some (also fair) time-of-play amount.
It makes me more likely to try a game on a whim knowing and if it's not for me I can refund it without hassle. Great way to handle it, I currently own close to 100 VR titles and have refunded at least 20+ that just weren't for me.
There are a lot of things that could cause you to not being able to enjoy the game, that you can't see in screenshots or videos. Issues with movement, room scale or motion sickness.
Compared to 2D games, it can be the case of "I can't play the game" rather than "I don't want to / don't like the game". So the refund system is especially great for VR.
FWIW, Oculus has the same system - IIRC, you can return for a full refund if you haven't played more than 2 hours in 14 days since purchase. I've used it, and IME it was seamless.
I've only completed a few projects with Steam/Open VR and the Vive, and found it a little harder to deal with. It's mostly wrapping input APIs, and different friends / invite systems.
But Vive don't have anything on the quest to the best of my knowledge. We ship a lot of stuff on Quests and dev on them is really quite nice (with Unity).
The worst part was having to make a workspace Facebook account or whatever that thing was called, right as the Quest was just coming out. All the docs were hosted behind a login. Nightmare.
I don't know if Oculus could have done it without Facebook money though. It seems to me the world at large wasn't giving VR enough attention. We're finally seeing proper B2B adoption now and shit like this with Facebook accounts is going to make things a lot harder. It's kinda tricky sometimes getting hardware into banks or the NHS or any place that has funky or strict hardware procurement. This is just another barrier for all that.
I've not read the dev emails that have come from Oculus yet. But Oculus are meant to be rolling out their new 'Business' backend for remote deployments soon. Hopefully this isn't B2B side too.
This looks promising. Thanks
> Giving people a single way to log into Oculus — using their Facebook account and password — will make it easier to find, connect, and play with friends in VR.
Ugh. I guess Facebook is making a play to become the Steam/XBox Live of VR. Why can't we just have gaming peripherals anymore without some kind of platform tie-in?
Because the companies make a large amount of money on the platform. Look at Apple/Google/MS/Sony/Nintendo charging for access to the platform - either explicitly for online play, by taking a cut of sales on the platform, or in the case of the console makers - both.
As someone who prefers to play games alone, it's frustrating. The first five minutes after installing Steam is a constantly stream of "stfu and stop shoving game release/update/sale announcements in my face", "gtfo with the popup messages that a friend is playing a game", "wtf? why are you auto-logging me into the messenger", "no, I don't consent to you building a hardware inventory of my machine and using it for internal stats", and "jfc, please just leave me alone and let me play some games".
It's almost enough to make me buy a shack in Montana and support the post office.
For me it's the reason, why I never started gaming again. I just wanna buy a game and play. I don't wanna have any spyware on my PC.
GOG is good if the game you want to play is on there - if you don't install GOG Galaxy.
You can download an executable installer from their website that is DRM free, can be installed offline, and you can keep a copy of forever.
GOG's weird position on Linux users quacks like a duck in my opinion.
The quotes have a real Tim Sweeney vibe to them.
It's also an argument for retro games.
Plug in a cartridge and go from power on to playing the game in a matter of seconds, with no privacy invasion.
This is why I love the Switch compared to all the other modern consoles. When I try to use a PS4 or an Xbox it feels like I'm fighting to be able to play - 10's of GB's of updates that take hours to "copy" after download, slow system updates, games that need to install for an hour after you put in the disc, etc. etc.
The Switch is the first console I've used in years where it seems like the maker of the console actually wants me to play games.
Except when you go into the eshop and have to scroll down pages of shovelware to find anything decent
Fair enough. I haven’t had that experience yet because I’ve been working through the first party titles like Zelda and Mario.
Subscribe to Humble Choice for a month and download all the drm-free games from their "Trove"!
Some time ago I worked on a tool [1] to do just that, unsure if it would still work. I also got lost between feature development and fixes in my git branches at the time, and never had time to finish this. Looks like upstream [2] became active again and merged some of my improvements, unsure if it works with the trove. I was also just made aware of this new project, dedicated to that issue [3]. I'd advise someone to start looking at the last one.
I don't usually do this, but I don't think it is against the TOS, so here is my HB referral link [4] Here's also a 20% discount on the humble store for 30 days for one lucky person who isn't a subscriber [5]
[1] https://github.com/MayeulC/hb-downloader/tree/next-next
[2] https://github.com/talonius/hb-downloader
[3] https://gitlab.com/silver_rust/trove_downloader/
[4] https://www.humblebundle.com/subscription?refc=Y9dywp
[5] https://www.humblebundle.com/subscription/activate-discount?...
itch.io is a great place to get drm free (indie) games.
At least on Mac, Steam doesn't stick around when you close it. I never understood the PC love for when you close apps have them simply stay resident around in the lower right taskbar. Opening is an active choice.
If you pick "exit" it exits. If you click the close button, it just closes the window but keeps running. You can also set in settings not to run on system startup. Mac has the same behavior.
Having to wait for Steam to open and log you in every time you want to launch a game sucks, plus keeping it open in the background lets you keep games up-to-date, lets you use the chatroom features, and some other stuff.
The good thing about Steam, which makes it good software in my opinion, is that you can easily customize it and turn features off, and nothing really gets forced down your throat. It's almost like Valve feels they actually have to make an effort to keep you as a customer. Compare that to anything from the tech giants.
> The good thing about Steam, which makes it good software in my opinion, is that you can easily customize it and turn features off, and nothing really gets forced down your throat. It's almost like Valve feels they actually have to make an effort to keep you as a customer. Compare that to anything from the tech giants.
If there's a way to turn off most of the recent UI updates I'd love to know how.
Which UI updates are objectionable to you? Here's a dump of the changes I make on my system when installing Steam. It's not all of them, just the most generally useful.
To keep Steam from starting when you log in, select "Steam" from the menu bar and then choose "Settings". Under "Interface", untick "Run Steam when my computer starts". While you're in here, uncheck "Notify me about additions or changes to my games, new releases, and upcoming releases" if you want Steam to not tell you about those. You can use "Set Taskbar Preferences" to select what options appear in the right click menu from the taskbar icon.
I run Steam in Small Mode, which makes it look like the old, old version of Steam before they introduced the full screen library. To do this, go to "Steam"->"Settings" and bring up the "Interface" group. Set "Select which Steam window appears when the program starts, and when you double click the Notification Tray icon" to "Library". Click okay and then select "View"->"Small Mode" to show the classic small Steam interface. To the right of the search box at the top of the screen is a selector where you can toggle what is shown - I set this to "Installed" so only installed games are shown. See here[0] for an example. This UI will revert if you uninstall a game - just go to "View"->"Small Mode" to set it again. If you set it before closing Steam then the next time you open Steam it will start in this mode.
To avoid being logged into the Friends system by default, open the "Friends" menu from the menu bar and choose "View Friends". Then click the cog in the upper right hand corner of the window that appears - this brings up the settings window. Set "Sign in to friends when Steam Client starts" to off. There are a bunch of notification settings in here - set them as you will.
To make the Steam store not suck (bandwidth), go to the "Library" tab in "Steam"->"Settings" and set "Low Bandwidth Mode", "Low Performance Mode", and "Disable Community Content".
To turn off Broadcasting, "Steam"->"Settings", "Broadcasting" group and set "Privacy setting" to "Broadcasting Disabled".
You can tell Steam to create desktop shortcuts or Start menu shortcuts if you want to not have to open Steam manually to play a game. When installing a game, tick the "Create desktop shortcut" or "Create start menu shortcut" when installing and then you can start the game (and Steam with it) by double clicking that icon. There is no option to automatically quit Steam after a game exits (because of course there isn't - "wHy WoUlD aNyBoDy WaNt To ClOsE sTeAm" the fanboys go). For installed games, you can right click and choose "Create Desktop Shortcut" to get a desktop shortcut for your game. You can use the "steam://" URL generated anywhere Windows accepts URLs to launch steam games.
Some people like auto-updates. Some people hate that they suck bandwidth, especially for single player games. Unfortunately, there is no option in not auto-update the game - you can chose "Always keep this game up to date", "Only update this game when I launch it", or "High Priority - Always auto-update this game before others" in the game properties. Setting this to "Only update this game when I launch it" will try to perform updates when you start a game - if you have this set and you have the downloads set to not download while in game, you should be able to force launch a game without updates and download will not start.
Set up "Offline Mode" now. If Steam is down and you haven't used "Offline Mode" recently then you won't be able to play your games with Steam offline. Choose "Steam"->"Go Offline..." to run Steam in offline mode. This has the benefit of being disconnected from the Steam service, updates, friends, etc.
I get all my games from Codex and Fitgirl. No multiplayer, but you don't want that anyway.
Don't sell CODEX/PLAZA short - there are Steamworks and CreamAPI multiplayer fixes shipped sometimes, and sometimes Fitgirl will add them in with the repack.
(Anybody reading this - there are publicly available NFO files and posts from Fitgirl that indicate what is included in a release/repack. I would never advocate violating copyright, and I certainly do not do so in a personal capacity.)
If people are curious they can find more info on cs.rin.ru steam forums. Great resource.
FYI, Valve publishes the hardware survey and updates it monthly https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
The rest of your post stands, just thought you might be interested
They just want to squeeze as much data as they can out of you. The ultimate goal is to stand as a proxy between you and the real world. I'm not saying this is what they are trying to build with AR and VR, but that's not too far fetched either.
Just imagine eye tracking tech in VR headsets. What a trove of data for advertisers! Did the user see may ad? For how long? Etc.
I hadn't imagined that before writing this, but they could do the exact same thing in the real world with AR. Did you spend some time looking at that car? You are interested in cars. Spending some time in the garden? Watching birds? Running? Etc. What's better than an always-on, always-ouside device which you use as a proxy to see things, and request information? MITM TLS (which Google technically does with Chrome) becomes useless if you just have access to the eyes.
> MITM TLS (which Google technically does with Chrome)
Google does not (need to) do this. Download a program like Fiddler and check for yourself.
> MITM TLS (which Google technically does with Chrome)
Do you have a source?
I worded that rather provocatively, but Google chrome is the man in the middle between you and the servers. Since it manages TLS connections, it could access everything if it wanted to. I am not sure it does send detailed telemetry on visited pages and contents to Google, but that wouldn't surprise me (and your sibling comment hints at that).
I wondered if there was some correlation between Google pushing for HTTPS and their introduction of chrome, but I guess that's unrelated, as they didn't have this capability before (except for users of their toolbar).
Hardware is difficult and expensive to make, and consumers are very price-sensitive.
In a world where everyone has a service subscription or a data hose to subsidize their hardware (see: most phones, game consoles, kitchen appliances, "smart assistants"), it's very difficult to be competitive just making hardware.
Given that the Oculus Quest is effectively a flagship phone with a strap attached to it at ~1/10 the sales volume of a flagship phone (rough figures: [0] [1]), it would be very difficult to even pay engineering expenses without a secondary income stream enabled by a) real-identity advertisement targeting/data sucking and b) ecosystem lock-in.
[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Galaxy-S20-series-sales-number... [1] https://arinsider.co/2020/05/25/data-dive-has-oculus-sold-80...
Windows Mixed Reality headsets are the best in this regard. Still locked to Windows but at least that's not a social platform. I really wish there was a version of it with better quality controller tracking, it's fairly good, but not on par with Oculus or Valve controller tracking.
More like the walled garden Apple App Store approach. Except this time it's a company with a bad track record of tracking you.
Steam is already the Steam of VR, btw. They have the flagship title (Alyx) and Oculus exclusives aren't necessarily compelling enough to make it a deal breaker.
I understand allowing the option to login with your Facebook account, but how is forcing it make anything easier?
Doing anything other than logging in with your Facebook account has been crippled; therefore, logging in with your Facebook account is easier.
It's just like "Download our app" to get a service the company can easily provide through a Web page, but refuse to. It's not there to benefit you. It's there to benefit the company.
Oculus was always trying to do this. When they first launched they did the same purchased exclusives stuff epic has done. Their software isn't compatible with other platforms except through unsupported hacks and they have no plans of changing that.
This was the whole oculus spirit since the beginning.
Because this is how the industry works now. Investors want to see the consistent revenue of XaaS platforms, so XaaS platforms are what you get -- and if you want hardware, it will be platform-tied.
The platform play was the only reason they bought Oculus.
My monitor, mouse and keyboard don't require any accounts (yet?), why does a device with two monitors and motion sensors require it?
>My monitor, mouse and keyboard don't require any accounts (yet?)
I take it you don't have any Razer devices.
The Razer accounts are in no way mandatory. They just have an app that auto-updates drivers (and probably does a lot of data mining) but you don't need to use it to use the device. It is a funny comment though, I laughed when I read it.
I don't know about Razer recently, but I have a 13 button Logitech mouse (G700s) and it would be essentially useless without the Logitech software to configure it. I assume Razer mice are the same, you could technically use them without Synapse, but if you're doing that you may as well have bought a Microsoft Intellimouse instead.
And Synapse did require a login for several years. Looks like it doesn't anymore, thankfully: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/razer-synapse-3-removes-lo...
Personal mouse experience, I had two Razers that died right outside warranty, while my Logitech is at >6 years. Those were before their driver shenanigans, but the drivers aren't even the main reason I wouldn't switch back.
I'm not sure if this is true for the G700s, but many other Logitech mice store the configuration on the device itself, which lets you configure it once and then get rid of the software or use it on computers or OSes where you've never installed the software. This is true for my G502.
It's true for a single configuration, but not if you want to bind different keys per program with the "Automatic Game Detection" mode.
I mainly use one profile for games and set any keybinds I need in each one, but I've used automatic game detection for other software like repurposing the DPI adjustment buttons for quick shortcuts to blender's popup radial menus.
Ah, gotcha. The G502 stores something like 5 modes and has a mode switcher button on the mouse, but I could see the convenience of wanting automatic switching per program.
+1 to this
I plugged my G700s into a Windows machine with the Logitech bloatware suite installed, programmed it, and I've been using it on a Mac for years since then without any trouble
I have a razer deathadder chroma with a kvm switch on mac/windows/linux systems. I do not have razer app installed on any of the three systems and the mouse works fine (including the forward/back side buttons and pressable scroll (so 5 buttons total)).
OSes do well up to that point, but 5 buttons is the limit of what tends to work well without some sort of special drivers
I recommend anyone with Synapse use your firewall to block all of their services from interacting with the Internet. I noticed Synapse was consuming a lot of CPU/network. I'm definitely never going to buy a Razer mouse again, I'll probably get a Zowie.
My Razer mouse is basically broken (it's not that the sensitivity is too high, it's just...completely off) until you install and log in with their app. Only after you log in is the mouse movement fixed.
I would never buy another Razer product, specifically because of this.
Are they still storing your mouse settings online?
I got rid of my Razer mouse as my custom key settings wouldn't kick in for about 5 minutes after each reboot
I have Razer Synapse installed right now, I am not logged into the service but I am still able to make configurations. Don't know what issue you're having. I would feel the same way if this was an issue though
> I would feel the same way if this was an issue though
It was: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/razer-synapse-3-removes-lo...
Oh wow, this was only a few months before I bought my hardware. I've been using a Naga since the first model and had it replaced in 2014. I guess I just got a bit lucky on my timing. The old hardware was really bad at trying to force Synapse on you too, used to even appear during Window 10 upgrades.
It would be great if they used the additional on board macro profiles as an 'out of the box' way of adjusting the mouse without software. You nerd the software to change mouse button 4/5 to native actions, otherwise it's just dpi control.
They absolutely are necessary if you want to disable or configure lighting, change DPI, acceleration, etc.
I will never buy a Razer product again.
No shit. I can't configure the lights on my former razer mouse without logging in.
Must be why I'm using a Steelseries now.
Edit: Apparently they gave up on that idiotic requirement. Sorry Razer, too late. Not touching your products ever again.
Edit 2: And since we're actually talking about Oculus, for me it died when they sold to Facebook. You needed to be pretty naive to think it won't come down to this in the long run.
> (and probably does a lot of data mining)
Not just data, either. A year ago or so, Razer was pushing a cryptocurrency miner along with their driver package:
And the Facebook account was in no way mandatory for Oculus until today's announcement we're commenting on. What's your point?
> They just have an app that auto-updates drivers (and probably does a lot of data mining) but you don't need to use it to use the device
Uh, yeah, updating drivers for mice. Just WTF? I get that it makes sense to have a capability of correcting bugs, but that should not require an app.
I've used a Razer mouse for ages solely on a Linux machine. Never made an account. Only used Windows initially to set my preferred LED lighting option via their crappy app.
Because Facebook needs your data.
And it's incredibly creepy. Movement just feels like an extremely intimate piece of data.
Agreed.
Luckily my favorite purchases are on steam and 2 years gives me plenty of time to move on from my rift. I'm not going to be forced to use facebook.
Last thing I need is a remote exploit on my tracking cameras and facebook telling them exactly who and where I am.
They manage to harvest my data just fine in Instagram and WhatsApp without having to login using Facebook
Oculus Quest is actually a complete gaming console, which is why you can use it for untethered play. You can buy and install games on it.
to track what games you bought and downloaded so you can download them again if your device breaks?
If those devices were invented in 2020 you can be certain they would all be "platforms" with monthly subscriptions. They would also have nonstop rabid defenders on social media.
So if I don't have a Facebook account and I buy an Oculus Quest after October, does this mean I may have to submit a copy of my driver's license just to set up a piece of consumer electronics?
You might not be able to use it even then. I deleted, not suspended, my Facebook account years ago and recently tried to create a new one because there was a Facebook group I needed access to. Created the account and a few minutes later it was suspended with no mention as to why and I was required to submit a photo of my driver's license to appeal the suspension. I did so and ended up waiting weeks before discovering that the account was now permanently suspended with no ability to appeal. No reason given. I literally did nothing between creating the account and it being suspended so I couldn't have violated any policies.
You need to submit a copy of your driver's license for a FB account these days??
Facebook has a policy where they can arbitrarily ban you for failing to "prove your identity" if they believe your account does not use "the name you go by in real life." One of the ways they ask you to prove your identity is to send in a license.
Unsurprisingly, this ends up hurting all sorts of people who do not use their legal names online: people who have just chosen other names, people who want to avoid being targeted or stalked, trans people, etc. They've updated this policy to allow for some of these situations (https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/facebook-real-names-1.336...) but folks still get banned for failing to comply.
Man, where is the world of anonymity that I loved?
As soon as someone manages to get your account flagged as possibly using a fake name I think.
If that is the case it would be harder to get a FB account than to vote in some states...
It's almost like having access to a company's services is less essential than having a hand in your society's decision-making mechanism.
What happens when we privatize voting, too?
A further sacrifice of the needs of the people in favor of the whims of our corporate overlords? You don't even really need to vote; Facebook already knows you want to vote for Mark.
We will get something that will look like the 2020 election.
It's almost as though Facebook understands how important it is to verify you are who you say you are. A simple verification to certify that those in their system are authentic.
What do you mean? Are you aware of a long history, and continued attempts today, of voter disenfranchisement in the US?
I am but I am also aware that a functioning democracy requires that the people trust the polls. And one piece of that is verifying that those who vote are who they say they are (and are citizens of the country they are voting in).
So you're in favor of zero cost licenses and zero cost delivery of said licenses. If your means of identification or authorization to vote aren't free, then you're advocating for a pool tax, which is illegal.
I'm not sure if you realize that there's only a handful of confirmed cases of voter fraud in the US in decades. The current system, based upon an address registration and someone confirming their information at the polling place, has achieved this result.
If they suspect you aren't who you are then yeah. Otherwise generally a phone number and email are enough. That's the price for Facebook, but it's good to be informed about what you're sacrificing.
I’m guessing the upside is that if you ever lose your password there’s an actual account recovery flow based on identity verification.
Genuinely think VR would be dead by now and considered a flash in the pan fad if it wasn't for the software and hardware Oculus has done. Valve and HTC just really didn't invest the time and money seriously in the platform and think HL:Alyx only shipped because Oculus dragged the format forward and showed the potential.
Just don't get why they're doing this at this point, I'd understand if they had iPhone level sales but although the Quest is selling great it's not there yet and it seems a misstep to push everyone into FB from it so soon lots of people will be turned off by the idea. Forcing the tens of thousand Oculus holdouts and saving a handful of engineering salaries surely can 't be worth the bad press and harm to the growing platform
Hope the 4 people who bought Quests after playing mine don’t whinge to me about this.
When the actor seems irrational, you should step back and ask "who is the actor and what are their motivations?"
This doesn't feel like an act of Facebook as a whole. They should be thinking long term, big picture. Zuckerberg seems to have an image of Neuromancer's Matrix in his head, and we ain't there yet. He'd definitely take this step but I wouldn't think he'd do it until he more solidly owns VR.
What I see here is a senior manager type, maybe a VP or a bit below it, who needs numbers that go dramatically up and to the right in the short term and is thinking about their own personal success. They'd be the ones to say "how do we turn this acquisition into Facebook-measurable success metrics so we can prove that we're worth all this spending? Ah, yes, mandate Facebook logins, great idea, do it."
Correct. The VP is also the person who wrote the "Ugly" memo that was leaked: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/growth-at-any-c...
Hardly a surprise.
> "What I see here is a senior manager type, maybe a VP or a bit below it, who needs numbers that go dramatically up and to the right in the short term and is thinking about their own personal success."
I mean, there are plenty of other ways to demonstrate value without forcing people to login with a Facebook account to use their Oculus devices. In-fact, I'm not sure what added value this requirement demonstrates in the first place?
People already pay for the hardware, servicing, apps/games, and upgrades.
“Demonstrate added value” can be an entirely fictional construct in business environments. Don’t take it literally.
Maybe the metric they're judged on is "connections" (Taking a hint from that memo in the sibling comment) not sales or even users.
Think you're spot on, makes a lot of sense of this move that doesn't really make sense.
Is this a non-sarcastic comment?
Valve and HTC VR are far superior. Quest is selling great because it's a standalone, but the resolution is poor and it's pretty buggy. Mine crashes at some point in about 33% of sessions. Oculus store has a very limited selection of games, and their recommendation engine is laughably bad ("Did you like Beatsaber? maybe you'll like a roller coaster simulator"). Casting from the Quest barely functions and disconnects frequently. Thank god for Sidequest, or I'd already have upgraded to Valve Index.
In what way do you think Oculus is superior?
Quelle surprise, a big tech company making a big tech company move to drive users into their embattled flagship.
I take this as a negative indicator of how things are going for Facebook. I don’t see any synergy with oculus other than that both products have users. Maybe that is enough from a business standpoint, but I feel forcing login to Facebook is going to kill oculus adoption, it isn’t like 6 years ago, there are viable alternatives if you want a VR rig. It just looks and feels desperate to me.
> I feel forcing login to Facebook is going to kill oculus adoption
I'm hoping you are right, but I feel like the average consumer is not so privacy aware and wouldn't mind using Facebook as their login. It's probably even more convenient since they already have a Facebook account and don't need to create an additional account for Oculus.
I recently gave a seminar about how to use Oculus devices in combination with Unity at university. Oculus produces great devices, but man is the software a convoluted nightmare.
A (very patient) student of mine tried to install the oculsu software on a current thinkpad for 4 days in a row. It always failed for various reasons. She used a current Windows 10 and her computer definitly has the specs. She even reinstalled windows. In the end there was an electron error, which we sent to the support - we never got a reply.
If you can avoid Oculus, do so at all cost.
What are viable alternatives?
HP Reverb G2 seems the be the most competitive so far. It's still in pre-order so its not battle-tested yet, but its 600$ and has comparable hardware to the valve index ($1000). Still 200$ more than oculus headsets, but that gap is much better than the 600$ from oculus to valve headset
Vive would be the immediate thought. There's also the pretty expensive Valve Index which is pretty much the best VR system you can buy right now.
SteamVR/OpenVR. It's fantastic.
The entire SteamVR ecosystem or WMR.
I love the valve index controllers - top of class imo.
Valve, HTC and HP.
Not wasting your only life on standing with a piece of plastic on your head? Seems pretty viable to me.
Ah, yes, instead let's just sit down in front of another piece of plastic typing on a keyboard to give unrelated advice on the internet about how bad it's to waste your life in front of a piece of plastic.
Yes, this was obvious next point in discussion. The trick is keep the thought going and never stop mid-step with a leg in the air thinking this intermediate position is a solid ground. As a next step, we might then ask what makes interaction with a piece of plastic worthy. For example, if you've noticed a popular discussion of a disaster that can be essentially summarized as “our favourite toy has been broken”, and the participants are actually grown up people (?) who are all about showing their investment in “serious business”, shouldn't you sprinkle it with some common sense? Is it a worthy kind of use of electronics?
Some shade from HP's Joanna Popper on r/HPReverb...
"The HP Reverb G2 does not require a Facebook account today or in 2023."
https://www.reddit.com/r/HPReverb/comments/ic93cn/for_anyone...
A lot of justified outrage here but I would make a separate point: I think Facebook has made a terrible decision here in terms of their platform play. They legitimately had a chance here to own the future of not just consumer but business computing. The apps now coming on the scene for virtual workspaces still have limitations but it is utterly clear to me that this will become a major mode of work and collaboration in the business world at some point in the future. But requiring facebook logins just threw a huge hurdle in front of that. There is no way I am going to suggest our workplace purchase these and then have everybody logging in with personal facebook accounts. And I can't imagine workplaces mandating people have or use facebook accounts.
I guess we will wait to see what Apple and Microsoft now do in the space since Facebook and Google both seem to have (inexplicably) bowed out of the race.
It's also a terrible decision for the other uses of VR, escapism, porn, games… For escapism, you don't want to be constantly reminded of the real world. For the other uses you don't want your real life friends and family to know how much time you spend on that…
What do they mean by this?
> Using a VR profile that is backed by a Facebook account and authentic identity helps us protect our community and makes it possible to offer additional integrity tools. For example, instead of having a separate Oculus Code of Conduct, we will adopt Facebook’s Community Standards as well as a new additional VR-focused policy. This will allow us to continue to take the unique considerations of VR into account while offering a more consistent way to report bad behavior, hold people accountable, and help create a more welcoming environment across our platforms. And as Facebook adds new privacy and safety tools, Oculus can adopt and benefit from them too.
Isn't oculus just some kind of display device? Last time I've checked LG and Samsung doesn't really policy what kind of content I'm using their monitors for.
They're trying to retcon something that sounds ever-so-slightly reasonable into a slimy business decision.
I'm reminded of this blog post from 2014. The predictions made here so far have basically all held true 6 years later.
http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-rea...
This action feels really connected to the coming Horizon virtual world thing -- which coincidentally is also predicted in the blog post linked above.
This seems to mean that Facebook's account review/policy process and lack of customer service - basically, that you're the product - now decides who can use Oculus.
A week ago, I tried to sign up for Facebook in order to buy some ads[1]. With nothing remarkable about the account or metadata[2], the first page I saw after the signup form was
> Your Account Has Been Disabled. You can't use Facebook because your account, or activity on it, didn't follow our Community Standards.
That page was shown immediately after the signup form. I jumped through their hoops of providing an SMS-able phone number, then a photo, and a few days later got this final result:
> Your Account Has Been Disabled. You can't use Facebook because your account, or activity on it, didn't follow our Community Standards. We have already reviewed this decision and it can't be reversed."
Again, there's no activity on the account because I never saw any FB pages, let alone used it. I'm not concerned - I cancelled my personal account back in 2013 and never looked back, and other than wanting to buy some public-service ads, I still have no interest in it. I sure would care if I had an Oculus, though.
[1]: Because Twitter prohibits or applies extra terms to many types of issue/advocacy ads, and while I applaud their approach, those of us running public-service campaigns get stuck in unpredictable policy enforcement.
[2]: Signing up from a residential Comcast US IP that I'm the only user/client on, using an email address at a domain I own, am the only user on, has been registered for 10+ years, etc.
I had the same experience yesterday. Tried to setup a personal account to access a group and next time I logged in I got the same message about not following their "Community Standards". How is that possible? I didn't even do anything yet! Continued for them to review the ban but I had to stop on the very first step where they asked my phone number since I'll never give them such an information. Now the whole shit is stuck and I cannot even remove my account without giving them my number.
Isn't this just a phishing scam? This should be illegal.
So how do I get my money back, since my Oculus Rift is now completely useless to me unless I allow myself to be spied on?
I purchased these devices with the promise that I would not need a Facebook account, and I do not have one..
You can't, because you can continue to use your device without a Facebook account for two years... which just so happens to be the statutory warranty period in the EU.
How convenient... At least I made it a point to only purchase VR games from Steam.
I'm in the same position as you, and from what I can tell we should be fine, though we may have to put up with some nagging from the damned Oculus store.
> [Re: 20203] If you choose not to merge your accounts at that time, you can continue using your device, but full functionality will require a Facebook account.
Which I read as "you won't be able to use the store anymore or receive driver/software updates for Oculus". I'm ok with that. By 2025 I'll either not be doing any VR or will want a new rig anyway.
Honestly, the number of times an acquiring company has promised "we'll never do this" and then "done this" is so staggering, I think any acquisition promises should be codified with the FTC during the acquisition process as consent decrees or the like, and it should require regulatory permission to roll back. And then anything claimed not listed as such should just be assumed to be a lie.
Yeah, like the last time Facebook "did that"! Merging data from WhatsApp and Facebook in that case. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
I have a different opinion than most comments here. I love the Oculus Quest. I don’t suggest that anyone waste their time in FB, but needing a FB account to buy VR experiences for the Quest us all right with me.
Off topic, but my favorites are the Star Wars Vader Immortal Trilogy, Racket Ball, and Ping Pong.
I don't know if I think it will work, but it is at least worth it to vote here to remove the FB login: https://oculus.uservoice.com/forums/921937-oculus-quest/sugg...
I don't know anything about uservoice.com, but are they even affiliated with facebook in any way? Why would facebook even care what happens on that site?
UserVoice is basically just a platform that companies (like Oculus) can use to manage customer requests.
If Oculus didn't want UserVoice, they wouldn't have signed up for it.
This is sad to me. I would like hardware to be hardware and services to be services and I don't want a piece of hardware to require a particular service, particularly when the hardware is of general purpose. I can accept that an XBox wants an XBox live account because an XBox is for one thing, playing games. An Oculus device really ought to just be a display peripheral that is used for communications, for content creation, and yes games. I want something like that to be as open as possible.
‘ Please log in to your national ID account before turning on your vehicle. ‘
This is in jest, but we all know this is what the future holds. Isn’t it interesting how inevitable this all is/seems?
I was expecting Facebook to sell off their VR operations, since they're not scaling up much. Zuckerberg says he's not interested in any business with less than a billion users. Facebook Spaces was a bust. Facebook Horizon didn't even launch. John Carmack went off to work on AI.
If anything, Facebook's VR effort is just there in case someone else comes up with a VR or AR threat to Facebook.
Who says horizon won’t get released? Also Carmack is one person. You’re judging a product due to one person leaving?
How to immediately lose a segment of your customers? Hmmm ah yes, require FB for login! Way to go!
Serious question: do you really think that someone who is enthusiastic about VR would refuse to get the best headset out there because they would have to create an account on some service online? I can’t fathom how that would stop anyone who is truly interested about playing VR. It’s like telling someone they will need a PS account to play the playstation or a Xbox account to play the xbox, they’d probably be fine with that.
> Serious question: do you really think that someone who is enthusiastic about VR would refuse to get the best headset out there because they would have to create an account on some service online?
As someone who had to make this exact decision. Yes. So there definitely are "someone"s who'd do exactly this.
But if you are asking if the average consumer would do so? Unfortunately the answer is they probably don't mind using Facebook.
I understand what you're saying, but with Facebook it's different, because it's tied to your real identity, which changes the context a lot compared to other services.
In my case, because of that, getting a Facebook account is hard, if not impossible, because those "real identity" checks are obscure: I attempted twice to sign up for work-related reasons, and I failed both times despite providing IDs and pestering support. I have literally NO idea why I cannot have a FB account.
However, even if I could, I hate Facebook so goddamn much that if this was my only option I would rather not use VR altogether. And I love my Oculus Rift, especially for game development.
I am royally pissed off, and I will gladly go forward with a class action lawsuit.
So, just to understand what you say correctly, I will ask: Do you think it is ethically tenable to require these VR interested, enthusiastic people to sign up to FB (known to be privacy nightmare), so that they are able to use the product they spent lots of money on? Is it acceptable to force them to do this, just because they are sufficiently interested in VR? Is it in general OK to force people to connect with a third party, which has nothing to do with the actual product?
I am not sure whether you are trying to justify this move, or whether you are questioning that it will have an economic impact or really what the point is.
I think it's fine yeah, I think it's fair to recognize that Facebook has had some privacy issues, but 1) it doesn't mean that it'll impact you if you just create a simple account and 2) it doesn't mean that FB will have more privacy issues in the future
I wouldn’t have bought one. At least I get two years use.
I currently own a HTC Vive (+wireless) and the Oculus Go. I was planning to sell both and buy the new Oculus Quest 2. I will not do this now. Bummer.
Is the Quest really better than the Vive pro? or the Valve index?
It's certainly a lot more affordable.
Guess the extra PII + the ad space are more valuable to them than a slight decrease in hardware sales.
The notion that you need a cloud login for a piece of computer periphery to work is just unacceptable to me.
"Want to print a page on your locally, USB-Connected printer? Log in at hp.com".
They should shape the Oculus Quest like an Alien Facehugger.
This TBH
Because there are multiple VR headsets, the only charitable argument for doing this is to market:
‘the occulus is for jumping in a facebook world to visit your family’
I can buy that, if they refund current owners who don’t want that...
>If you’re an existing user and choose not to merge your accounts, you can continue using your Oculus account for two years.
At least this gives me enough time to sell my Oculus and buy from another company.
Isn't it cool how you can dust off your old Nintendo Entertainment Systems and give your kids a blast from the past? Share your childhood with them?
Well, that's a things from the past with hardware it seems. Effective obsolescence through corporate policy.
Yeah 2 years is enough for me to enjoy the Quest and then move on.
I deleted FB for a reason and it will stay that way.
A shame that their shitty growth hacking position will contribute more e-waste to the environment unless the headset can be fully jailbroken.
Yeah, they just lowered the resale value of your hardware... HTC Vive it is then.
Better throw my "old" vive on Ebay. Some people are going to need some headsets!
Exactly. I deleted my Facebook account years ago. I have an oculus account. Really disappointing though, it means I either have to link that to my girlfriend’s account or sell the oculus within two years.
Realistically I’ll probably sell the quest, stick to buying steam games from now on, and buy a headset from a different company as soon as they get a wireless headset.
Is there anything to stop you from making a fake Facebook with a throwaway email and use that?
Or do they verify accounts in some way now?
I tried to use an old backup account a while back and got hit with a demand that I send them a copy of my id to prove my identity. I won't do that though.
They can verify them via their social network.
An account with no connections is HELLA suspicious.
> We will take steps to allow you to keep using content you have purchased, though we expect some games and apps may no longer work.
Complain as much as you want about Steam, at least they are a games store and store only.
I don't know why anyone would buy games from the Oculus store.
I would appreciate suggestions on how to regain my Facebook account, shut down without explanation a year ago. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I have repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.
I don't want to create a fake Facebook account. I want my own back.
Was there any doubt that this would happen? I mean, it's always the same game: naïve developers with an outstanding product, huge company willing to buy-out technology while lying through their teeth making promises. It's Edison scams Nikola Tesla all over again. I'm baffled that technology pioneers and makers make the same naïve mistakes again and again for over 2 centuries now.
I'm sorry for the following statement. Deal with it. You want shiny new products and technology. You develop new magical technology. You write insightful and groundbreaking scientific papers. Why are you dependent on investors, publishers and giant tech-firms? They exist because of you, because you need them. And they know that. So, please, rid yourself of the illusion that your product/paper can only survive if you give it away to someone with power and influence. You give away power, for money, that's why Facebook, Apple, Google got so powerful in the first place. It's your fault. Deal with it, you can do better than that.
I never have nor never will have a Facebook or Twitter account. Probably not other social media either.
It's bad enough having a Google account and all that encompasses.
It is astonishing that another company would require an account on some other system. Now I don't have a problem with allowing using your Google, Facebook, etc. account as a convenience to authenticate your account on some other service.
HN is social media.
I suppose you could say that about any online forum.
There is a qualitative difference between HN and Facebook or Twitter. One of these doesn't try to pry its tentacles into every aspect of your life while trying to capture every possible scrap of information about you known and unknown.
If you're in Australia: Refund your Oculus. If you aren't able to use the product without agreeing to new terms, conditions of licensing agreements - you are within your rights to return your product. Sorry to those who already invested in developing for this platform. Amazon is the main supplier, and they're usually very good for returns.
The larger point here is that there needs to be sensible limits on how many markets or products a single company or group can operate in (among many other regulations). Otherwise the endless acquisitions by the global behemoths will continue right into techno-fascism of one kind or another.
They probably want to cut down on people reselling their accounts with the games in them. That's what I did when I sold my oculus during the quarantine. Why shouldn't I be able to resell my games just because they're digital now?
Fortunately, OpenHMD exists: http://www.openhmd.net/
I don't get what people over here expected when Facebook acquired Oculus, and also don't get why it is so hard to create a throwaway facebook account. No condescension. Just not sure what I am missing in the extreme positions here
I think this is due to Facebook stance to disallow these kind of accounts without a real name. They can block your account if they think you aren't using your real name and have you submit an official ID card or driving license to unlock, process that may take weeks.
Also, forcing people for no real reason to create (or use) an account on a platform they hate is revolting. No everybody wants to use a social network to share with "friends" their gaming habits, or to play local games.
Same here. It feels like an overreaction.
I will use mine for 2 years but I have zero need for social.
This will probably be when I stop using my Oculus. When I first got my Rift I was super excited about the technology and it generally did not disappoint! I have never been much of a gamer but love the idea of VR. I, however, deleted my facebook account back in 2012 when I realized that it did not contribute anything to my life. Over the years I have had to make the decision between not being able to use a product or creating a facebook account just to use them. Most of those products were mobile apps that required facebook logins. I have always chosen to not use the products and will do so again.
The most annoying part to me is that the only reason Facebook should have had any interest in Oculus (apart from the money of course) is to create a VR/AR social network. Yet here we are 6 years later and no Metaverse.
Cool, so your existing Oculus device is guaranteed to be an expensive brick 2 years from now if you value privacy in any way.
Call me old-fashioned, but does anyone else find it a bit strange that one needs to log in in order to use a display device?
That Oculus had better have some pretty special pixels, if they need a network connection to even be visible.
This is largely about the Oculus Quest, which is a self contained device (i.e. a smartphone in a VR headset)
I'm assume their tethered display devices will still work without an account, assuming you don't want to use their store/apps.
Why would you assume that? The Oculus system software requires you to login. Without it running no apps run, even 3rd party apps.
Your assumption would certainly be a reasonable one, though in today's world, who knows? Many mobile phones, for instance, now try to introduce additional "terms and conditions" before they're willing to work. Who wants to buy a whole Oculus in order to find out whether it feels like working or not?
Hy if someone from Oculus reads this requiring a Facebook (or Google) account for login means I will never buy your products.
I also now many other people who think the same.
Goodby, I'm happy I hadn't yet time to but an Oculus product.
Here comes the walled garden. I don't have an Oculus HMD but took the risk of purchasing exclusives from their store and running it via Revive. Looks like those days may be over soon.
If you want to make promises to a community about what will happen to your company after its acquired, tie them to a contract. "If you make Facebook login required for Oculus within the next 20 years you owe me personally an additional $10B." Then you can tell everyone about the line item in the contract and vow to donate half of it to the EFF or rescue.org or whatever floats your boat. Don't make promises your ass can't cash.
I already had to tie it to a Facebook account in order to record video on Quest, unfortunately.
Quest is a great device, but I don't think my next VR headset will be an Oculus.
It’s a super device but I’ll never recommend it again.
Incredible. I deleted my facebook account earlier this year, and I've been looking to get a VR headset. This sort of forces me into the Vive camp, I suppose.
OK. I had planned to get an Oculus Quest for Christmas (since it is reasonably accessible, flexible and probably the best all-around headset out there right now), and how my gut feeling is... No. Just no. I don't want to have Facebook on anything.
I might consider creating a brand new, singleton account to use it, but to be honest my gut reaction is that if they do not have a non-Facebook login, I will just _not_ use it.
The FAQ had nothing about developing for the device.
Facebook TOS prohibits making multiple personal accounts. So one might assume company one works for then provides a company account as using the civilian account is not really a good thing.
If they mandate using the real civilian one then it’s maybe a good reason to finally ”close” it by removing all friends and photos. It’s just a dev account for oculus then.
This is very saddening.
The fact that Facebook had not made this move actually had a significant impact on me in assessing their overall "evil" factor for other services. Now that they have, I'm left owning a Quest and looking for another platform to move to over the next few years. I hope the competition steps up because the Quest has really nailed everything important about VR.
Facebook is dangerously close to collapsing the whole VR industry with this.
When will Carmack jump ships and go to join Valve?
https://www.engadget.com/2019-11-13-john-carmack-agi.html
he's just a consultant now but you can bet he's been disillusioned by all of this.
It seems he will not if this article from 2018 is to be believed. But he is also a Gamer and a reasonable guy, so he might have a change heart.
Link: https://uploadvr.com/john-carmack-i-intend-to-stay-at-facebo...
I thought he was working on AI now?
I’m not sure how we’ve learned to accept “I am altering the deal” from tech companies just because they have the ability to change things remotely.
I mean, what if a furniture company just decided to break into your house, reupholster your couch and remove some of the pillows? (Or I suppose, install a recording device on the bottom?)
What makes me angry is that people won't learn anything from this. The next time something like this happens, people will defend it to the end and call people who warn about it "paranoid" or "cynical".
Corporations are not your friends. Unless it is set in legal writing you can't take their promises at heart value. Even if they set it in legal writing it might mean nothing since they always find a way to worm around it. Their ultimate goal is to fuck you over. Their pricing and profit margin are "take as much as possible without them complaining". Games will get more expensive and it has nothing to do with development costs, it has everything to do "because they can so why wouldn't they".
Corporations are not idiots and they know how to do something subversively and over a long period of time so people don't notice the changes. Look at how microtransactions in games became almost a norm nowadays and future generations won't even see anything wrong with it. Look at how using FOMO and other psychological tricks are actually a "good retention method" now instead of being unethical, people don't even complain against it any more, they complain if it is badly implemented and they don't get enough of it. Companies selling your data are getting less and less backlash over it with people using arguments as "oh well they know everything already, I don't care".
I really hate all of this.
Any news on jailbreaking Oculus devices so that I don't have to play this silly game with hardware I own?
This is a been a problem with Rift from the start. Of course it's 100x worse to require an FB account but regardless, a record is kept of everything you do with the device. VR-Chat 2 hrs day? Virt-A-Mate every night? Using that video app from pornhub? All recorded and sent to facebook.
Anyone remember the site https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ - it records all the startup acquisition letters.
There should be a sister site that records all the post-acquisition promises that get nuked
Ha this is inevitable. Facebook would not leave the device alone obviously. Oculus opens ups brand new data set and user base to sell ads. Not just that facebook has done something that google couldn't do, they created another successful product beyond their cash cow.
I guess now is the time to look into how to root the console and install a custom ROM in a similar fashion to de-Googling your android phone. There is already enough support in the community for side-loading APKs and the like. Does anyone know of any ways to achieve this?
I know this is a little off... but what would happen if say Alex Jones bought an Oculus device? I mean, they've banned a number of people from the platform.. and if the devices won't work without it, would that be breach of contract/sale?
Great, I can now attempt to sell my Vive Pro because this will surely drive up demand for it.
Not going to repeat the general criticism covered in other comments, but how is that going to work with professional users? Using employees private Facebook accounts in a work setting is somewhere between a really bad idea and impossible.
I've been really interested in purchasing a VR platform but Oculus' Facebook integration has always been a dealbreaker for me.
What are the alternatives for a self-contained VR system? I don't want to have to plug into a PC.
Don't you need to be at least 13 years of age to register a Facebook account?
I believe Oculus' TOS also "requires" you to be 13 or older. Stares at VR Chat
Why do I need to log in to my display device?
You made the mistake of thinking it's your device. It's Facebook's device, you just payed to use it.
I see a VR headset is primarily a piece of hardware. Think of it as a next-gen computer monitor. Users like me expect it to work with any computer or ecosystem (Steam, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). Thus the outrage..
Hardware tied to some account is ridiculous. Good thing there are projects like OpenHMD and Monado, that aim to implement open runtime for VR and AR devices.
* http://www.openhmd.net/index.php/devices/
* https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/ligh...
Amazing, so if you get banned from Facebook due to one of their dumb rules or algorithms, I'm assuming you can sue them for the value of the device they've just taken from you?
And? Did you think Facebook bought them cuz they thought VR was cool.
I -just- decoupled Facebook from my Oculus account in preparation for deleting Facebook. I guess in two years I make a throw-away account, or better yet, move to Valve's current offering.
I'm super done with this company.
I'm able to play Half Life: Alyx natively on Linux with my Valve Index, as well as other games running through Proton. Not only does Valve support Linux natively; they've been funding development on GFX drivers and things like DXVK. Unfortunately OpenHMD (which would let you use the headset completely decoupled from Steam) doesn't support the Index yet, but it has been worked on and it looks like it just needs someone to finish up that work. Not that you necessarily care about Linux support, but it gives you an idea of how they feel about their products and their community.
The headset itself is expensive but it's the best consumer headset in existence right now. I can play for hours (depending on the game) without feeling like I need to stop. There's no single thing that's dramatically better than other headsets, but just about everything about it is at least somewhat better. Comfort, tracking, visuals, adjustability, and so on.
Anyway, Valve is just night-and-day different from Facebook. In fact they're the ones maintaining support for the Rift on Steam, not the other way around. Valve wants VR to be an open platform, and Facebook wants it to be a part of Facebook, entirely owned and controlled by them.
Same plan here. The Quest I got earlier this year is my first and will be my last Oculus device. Hopefully someone else makes a comparable headset soon (comparable = full wireless PCVR capability, like what the Quest + Virtual Desktop offers), ideally at a comparable price point as well... how hard can it be, the Quest is 1.5 years old by now, there's gotta be something at least similar in the works somewhere.
Good move, Valve are gamers at heart while Facebook is out to get your data and make as much money possible from it.
Valve is also private. Theoretically they have more leeway to make short-term unprofitable decisions without having to answer to public shareholders.
Theoretically, but their history suggests they won't. This is the company that made gaming on Linux viable, has a platform open to all VR hardware, and lets people sell keys on alternative stores without even taking a cut even though they are clearly in a very dominant market position.
They have their faults, but acting like a modern big tech company isn't one of them.
Valves VR looks awesome!
Yah, guess i'm going to be selling my rift, or at least re-purposing it. Not that it matters much, i'm already unsupported as I refused to upgrade to win10 on the machine it was attached to.
PS, oculus has been the only piece of hardware I've purchased in the past few years where the drivers caused a blue screen. Thats ignoring all the other bullshit problems with the driver stack they have that can't even consistently enable a pile of USB devices.
As companies grow, they lose touch with smaller market segments. I see that Facebook has grown to the point that it has lost touch with it's ENTIRE oculus market. (Who buys Oculus? Cutting-edge techheads, who often don't like social media). I expect that Oculus will die a slow death unless some exec sees some important metric going down and tries to save it. But Facebook is huge, so saving Oculus is unlikely to make a dent in financials.
How much longer until we need to login to use create-react-app
That would be difficult to enforce, since React is open-source. It'd take ten seconds for someone to fork it.
Anyone care to guess how long before this happens to Instagram and/or Whatsapp accounts? Could be a year or could be 5 years -- it's not if, just when.
It's good to know before the updated Oculus Quest comes out.
Personally it doesn't bother me immensely... however it's annoying that I'd have to review, check and double check all the privacy settings before using the device as I don't expect any of the defaults to keep my activity private.
I'll probably opt for using my Oculus account another 2 years, at which point I'll likely have bought another headset.
Talking of login. I’ve just tried to login to EBay app using Google authentication. I have 2 step verification turned on. It now specifically requires gmail app to access the verification code. It no longer supports Apple mail app. Is this a sick joke?
The only way around it was to send the verification code via tex. I'm so concerned now that Google will only send verification codes to Android device in the future.
I recently switched from using Chrome to Firefox. Next on my list is probably to try to wean myself off of using Google search. Getting my email off gmail is going to be harder and not sure what the best way to do that is.
Get a second email -- potentially at your own domain so you are never again locked to any particular service -- and use it in conjunction with gmail. Sign up any new accounts to your new email, and slowly migrate others as you see fit. After a year or two, your gmail will only receive spam, and anything important will be in your new account.
The "own domain" is the hard part here. I've never owned one and figuring that all out takes time. Even more so getting all the email server configuration figured out.
It's super easy. Pick a registrar, find a name that exists, and pay the ~$15/yr.
If you pick a mail service that lets you bring your own domain, they almost all have step-by-step guides to configure it. It's a half-dozen settings to copy/paste.
Using your own domain certainly isn't a requirement, but it lets you easily get out of this situation without any trouble if your next provider decides to do something you don't like.
There's lots of alternatives out there, but the good ones aren't free - ProtonMail is one, FastMail is another. There's others as well, but those are the one's I'd recommend. There's also Hey, but I'm still not sold on that one.
yes, since this problem I have actively tried to think of some alternative to use. I'm heavily invested in gmail and Google search
Sometimes I wish Facebook should at-least try to prove us wrong. These are trying times with everyone being paranoid about how their data is mishandled, shared, used and for good reason. What is so difficult in giving users the option to connect their Facebook accounts if they wish because lets be honest so users might just want to but making it mandatory is only going to hurt the gaming community.
I have been recommending the Quest but that’s all over.
I haven't used FB in a while, but are there any real barriers stopping people from making fake/alt FB accounts for this purpose? If not, that seems like a pretty easy way to just not care about any of this to me. (Or was there a theory that FB wasn't already logging everything you did on an Oculus before they started making logins mandatory?)
Pretty much exactly what I was afraid of when they were first acquired, and what they initially promised they wouldn't do. Looks like the success of the Quest has emboldened the reinholders. That as of this posting, 100% of the comments are a variation of 'WTF', it's pretty telling they felt they could get away with it regardless.
Have a Rift S, left FB several years ago, now forced to go back in the future. I hate you FB. Will not buy Oculus again.
I made an FB account just for Oculus apps that need it. It has no personal information about me except email address.
... and the personal data on how much time you spend in which game, whether those are day times or night, whether it's regualr or irregular etc. from which different information on your situation an be derived.
If it's connected to your desktop, it can also use all the dark patterns Facebook knows to tie it to your other activities ...
Put in a data information request and see what they do actually know about you.
May well be insightful. Friends who have your email and phone number in a contact entry who also have FB and synced contacts - etc etc etc. May well have more information than just an email address and way to look at it is - would you bet a large sum of money that is all they have? Always a good way of putting perspective upon things I find.
I did this. Then one day, facebook locked me out of my account unless I sent them a picture of my driving licence.
Isn't it against Facebook TOS to have more than one Facebook account, or to open a Facebook account for someone/thing that isn't a real person?
Worst case they delete his Facebook account and he can create a new one.
Are his game purchases tied to the deleted FB account?
Try to say that about Google
I have a bridge I'd like to sell you then.
The comments on the original article seem to indicate that only facebook thought this was a good change haha.
I still have a hard time understanding what kind of value can be extracted from user data.
Who uses this data? For what purpose? How can this data give an edge to make money elsewhere?
Is there a real relationship between data collection and ability to sell more things and increase profits? I'm not seeing it.
That's wonderful. I tried to create an account on FB last week. I don't know why, but it got suspended immediately. Tried again with different info - suspended.
I didn't even wanted a FB account in the first place, but now I wonder why I can't do that
Everyone, I think it's time that we acknowledge that Facebook may have a slight tendency to deceptively invade users privacy and never ever keep any promise it makes. Nothing to worry about but just ya know, good to be aware of. /s
Kid who didn't know better changes mind when new information is realised.
Not worth vilifying. Not worth accolades for basic rational thought.
Palmer is meh. As other comments have pointed out, don't waste energy on the scapegoat.
Complain about the people in control - Facebook.
I’ve been wanting to buy an Oculus Quest since lockdown started, but I’ve been having trouble finding one in stock for a reasonable price. I guess I’m glad I didn’t succeed in purchasing one, and now I won’t be buying one at all.
I’m moving out and selling mine if you’re in the bay
I don’t have a Facebook account. My birthday wishlist just got one item shorter :(
Why do I need to "Log in" to a VR headset?
The tech industry has gotten rather silly.
I have invested heavily learning react and react native and i don't have(or want) facebook account. I will remind this incident in the future before investing time in any thing related to facebook.
Isn't react open source though? Why would you care about the source of it if it serves your purpose? Facebook doesn't make any money off react or as far as I know use it for political leverage. Can you point out why you'd quit using a technology because the person/company behind it is "bad" ? The Nazis improved rocket technology tremendously during WW2 and we didn't toss that knowledge because the Nazis invented it.
Its not just about the react being opensource. Its the philosophy that drives the ecosystem. Facebook can come up with a react component for VR on the browser which work's really well only with facebook account.
The analogy would work better if the Nazis were still around and handing out rockets for free, to make it easier for them to hire engineers who know about rockets, so that they can launch better rockets at people.
I'm curious -- I have a Facebook account, but I have the app platform disabled.
It seems that the app platform may be used for managing logins on third party sites. Are they likely to require it for Oculus devices?
Welp I won’t be buying any future Oculus devices. I’ve got a Rift and enjoy it but I have no intentions of creating a Facebook account. I deleted mine back in like 2010-2011 and haven’t looked back.
This was not required before? When I got my Oculus Quest a at the end of June I found no other way to log in but create a facebook account. This account is now only used for the Oculus Quest.
Wait.. Some games are rated 7 years, my kid is old enough to play the games and currently has his own account but he is not allowed to be on Facebook. How will this work?
Next VR headset will not be Oculus.
Most of the major VR headset companies (Oculus, HTC, Sony) do not advise that children under 13 use VR. You have to be 13 to sign up for a Facebook account - although I'm not sure if you meant "not allowed" in the sense that you won't let him sign up for an account.
A game's age rating only covers the suitability of the content in the game in terms of things like violence, strong language etc. It does not imply that the game is aimed at or would be enjoyed by a particular age range. There is no special consideration for VR in terms of age ratings.
Saw that coming. As a user of the original Oculus Rift headset, I will definitely be upgrading to a non-Oculus headset within the next 2 years (before Facebook accounts become mandatory).
I just bought a new gaming PC powerful to be usable with an Oculus. I have some cash handy from a stock sale as well. I was really considering one.
That's never going to happen now.
As soon as I needed a Facebook account to use the social features, I bailed. Thankfully I was fortunate enough to buy a Valve Index. SteamVR is a much nicer platform anyways
What this even mean? Oculus device is a hardware, has some drivers, supporting software, and applications. What exactly requires user to login in order to work? Drivers?
I guess there are still other brands who sell headsets :/
I'm actually surprised this wasn't a requirement before now. I'd always assumed that Oculus was really just a new way to "onboard users."
Required for arena before - I would not buy one if this was mandatory to turn it on.
Well, as someone who has been social media free since 2015 this really just encourages my feeling that I must not need one. (Even though I want some VR setup )
you are literally posting on social media right now
Good thing the Reverb G2 is right around the corner!
I very nearly bought an Oculus Quest recently due to some glowing reviews, despite my strong anti-FB feelings. So very glad I hesitated.
Glad I bought my HTC Vive Cosmos. I was going to wait for the Oculus to be back in stock, but I didn't. I gave up FB 6 years ago.
"If you are an existing user and choose not to merge your accounts, you can continue using your Oculus account for two years."
Phew
As someone noted above -- that 2 years is the statutory warranty period for the EU.
They are setting that time limit so existing users can't call to return Oculus saying "I don't agree to these terms" because _they aren't terms yet_ for that user. But by the time they finally require you to log in with the account, it will be impossible to refund because you are outside the legal warranty period for both US and EU.
It's planned exactly to trap people who already bought so that some percentage will "give in" and just log into Facebook so that they don't suddenly have a VR device (and VR library) that's not worth anything to them anymore.
There are far more people who will do this than those that won't, and that's a portion that COULD have returned it if Facebook was allowing them to.
It's worth noting that the statutory warranty period in the UK is 5-6 years (depending on which country), not 2 years as is the minimum required by the EU.
So it might be interesting to see how this plays out here, although I'm not holding out a lot of hope for a positive result.
Sounds like Facebook doesn't know how to make money with Oculus unless they require people to log into Facebook to use it.
Welp...I now have an Oculus Rift S for sale.
Guess I have 2 years until my Rift goes in the bin. Hopefully there'll be something even nicer out by then.
I'm tired of saying fuck Facebook on HN threads, but man, fuck Facebook.
If I ever move my racing sim rig to VR, it's definitely not going to be an Oculus.
This really is no surprise. So many threads on the front page shocked at the evils of Facebook and Apple.
All were predicted given their past record.
Don't buy from bad companies and this isn't an issue.
... except when the non-bad company you bought your DK-1 from gets bought by a bad company.
Non-bad companies could set up "will not get bought by Facebook" poison pills. Say they will release all IP to the public domain when acquired by Facebook. Enforceable contract with a third party.
I'm tired of reading these type of comments. Do you enjoy VR? Just create a facebook account, that's not a big deal. There's nothing evil there, people are just grasping for straws.
I deleted my FB account over 5 years ago. A few years after that, I tried creating a new one to sell something on Marketplace, and they closed my account, saying I needed to provide a driver's license due to fraud. I'm not giving FB my driver's license to sell something online, and I'm certainly not going to do it to play a video game in VR.
don't you do that on other platforms like ebay and amazon?
You give your diver's license to Amazon?
if you're a seller I'd imagine you have to give a form of ID yes, as a buyer they have pretty much all my information from credit card to address of residence.
We wouldn't even be having this discussion if Palmer Luckey hadn't persevered and created the Oculus.
Zero chance I'd buy an Oculus now.
I don't see what the fuss is about. Why shouldn't Facebook try to provide the best user experience possible? We live in an increasingly connected world, so this tight integration between different products is absolutely critical to a positive user experience. Would people complain if any other company added Facebook login to their product? No!
I assumed Facebook had already done this. Users are so naive for assuming it would never happen.
I knew this was coming eventually, but I am definitely selling my Rift after this announcement.
I just bought an Oculus Quest and now feel bad about it. Sadly there are no real alternatives.
Alright, then I’ll be selling this Rift S and getting an Index after all. Fuck Facebook.
Need to log in to Facebook to use VR.
It just doesn't even make sense.
FB is too entrenched in our lives. And for what?
What a trip this has been from the Kickstarter to its acquisition to this situation.
I was looking forward to purchasing the next generation of Oculus gear. Oh well.
I was waffling between VR setups, looks like I can take Oculus off the list.
Good that i bought a index.
Cool, this makes choosing my next VR headset upgrade easier: not Oculus.
Why? Even Apple doesn't require an Apple ID to use their devices.
This looks like a great opportunity for pine64 to make a wireless 6DOF headset (Quest clone)
They already ship a mobile phone. https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
I think there is a lot of benefit from unifying various identities and identity stacks. You can put all the investment in improving one identity platform instead of trying to maintain a user identity for every acquisition you make.
I'm shocked that anyone is surprised by this. It was immediately obvious that this move was the only reason for Facebook to buy Oculus in 2014. If you fell for promises, well, hopefully this has been a learning experience.
I am going to sell my Rift and buy a Vive, HTC from here out!
So glad I never bought an oculus. Is anyone really suprised?
I guess I know what company to not buy any VR hardware from.
A little misleading since apparently the Facebook account is only acting as a replacement for an Oculus account. It's not like they're forcing Facebook logins on a device that required no logins.
That kills the possibility of selling your account.
Making a lot of expensive bricks just like that.
I just changed my mind about getting an Oculus.
yeap, there goes my changes of having an Oculus (never had a facebook account and won't)... Guess one less option then...
No Facebook, and therefore no oculus needed..
Andrew Reisse is rolling in his grave right now. This is disgusting and not what he wanted and disrespectful to everything he worked toward. I am ashamed of Oculus.
It's completely expected since acquisition but FUCK. The problem is that there's little competitor for standalone VR and platform's openess.
People will bitch and complain, but at the end of the day, there’s no better device for untethered VR that you can take and setup anywhere.
That just means there is no device for untethered VR. I think this is more likely to just limit VR adoption more than anything else.
I don't think it'll have a meaningful adoption-limiting effect, and honestly, this is the most interesting dynamic of technology right now.
Voice recognition is an extremely solved problem. A lot of the hard part of the AI---the stuff that appeared impossible in the '80s---works consistently on Google, Alexa, and Siri. It just needs to know enough about you to make intelligent guesses at your intent.
... which means it needs access to all that big data the big company collected on you and users like you.
There are technologies that are owned by big companies that will leverage them for ecosystem lock-in. Want a neat personal assistant? Sure; just use your Google account. Want some untethered VR? No problem; just login via Facebook. And that's generally how things will be; you don't have to use it, but you'll be off the cutting edge if you don't.
Because ecosystems are where the money is, and cutting-edge tech costs money. That's the iron law of capitalism and technological progress.
(I'm still waiting for my Linux phone. Thought it might be shipped to me in 2020, but with COVID slowing down production, 2021 looks more likely. But at least I'll feel some moral superiority once I have the thing in my hands that other people already have if they just give up and buy into a big-data vendor's ecosystem. ;) )
The general public doesn't give two shits about privacy and the amount of data that Facebook collects. They'll gladly go along with this to continue playing their games.
What this really means is that there is no untethered VR device for privacy-minded folks which make up a tiny portion of the overall VR users.
I think the general public does care about privacy. How many people illegally smoke weed? Millions easily. Those people care about privacy.
And there are plenty of people who aren't techies who still don't want all their info going to facebook.
> untethered
Tethered to Zuckerberg.
Damn. Best alternative to the Rift S?
This is effectively ransomware. If you do not agree with the new eula Facebook will deactivate your otherwise working hardware.
Well. Another lost customer here.
Please excuse my lame pun:
> foc-u-lus
I wonder if this is even legal in the EU, given the GDPR laws that prohibit sending customer data to the USA.
Software is soft
Don't like
Who cares?
Death to Facebook
TLDR;
Facebook to Oculus Users: Go f* yourself.
This is my biggest fear: no longer being able to create individual accounts that are not Oauth'd through social media. I don't think my bank will require facebook any time soon, but I hope laws are in place to prevent it when the time comes. Sen. Wyden, I hope you're listening.
Why do you even need an account? It's a display after all, I don't need an account to use my external monitor, keyboard or anything else.
Oculus has an app store, and Quest is a standalone device (mobile phone hardware on your face).
It's understandable to need an account for these things, but of course this being an FB account is creepy.
I can understand the store aspect (even though in a perfect world you could buy apps and games without DRM and having to log in), but why would you need an account because something is a standalone device? What's the difference if there is a cable attached?
Quest is not a screen. It's a computer with a built-in screen. iMac for your face. Quest with a link cable is still not a screen, but a computer running a kind of "remote desktop" software.
The computer part needs an account. Virtually all software for it is paid, and it is genuinely helpful for non-technical users to have a "cloud" account that ensures they won't lose their games even if they sell or break the device.
If IBM was able to pull this off with their PC/AT/PS/2 family, we'd still be in stone age.
Anybody with more than 2 brain cells should demand open standard hardware to be used with software of choice.
The situation where you need different headsets for different apps/games is perverse. Imagine having to have an app store per monitor brand.
Game developers should invest in an open standard and take away the leverage from air merchants.
I have an Oculus Go and pretty much only use it for Skybox and nothing else. I hope I can just disable all updates and keep using it without connecting it to a FB account. I haven't even bought anything on the store.
I guess it might be time to look at FOSS alternatives for these devices, just to keep basic functionality. I wonder if the bootloaders are locked.
I was considering buying a VR headset,Oculus just dropped their name out of the hat
I've owned the first Rift kit for a couple of years. I'll either stop using it by the time 2023 rolls around or be looking for new offerings.
One of the things that pleased me about it is that it hasn't already been rendered obsolete. Well I guess FB has set a date on that now for no good reason on the user end.
I'm curious to see what might be coming around hardware-wise in that time.
HP Reverb G2 is coming out next month, and reviews are amazing.
I was starting to look into VR and I guess this crosses Oculus off the list. I don't intend to ever have a Facebook account.
Honest question: you bought a device that depends on an "app store" to work. What exactly did you expect?
-- from someone waiting for VR to become a commodity hardware, like a monitor.
@dang, fix typo in headline? Faceboook.
Whoa, how'd we miss that? Fixed noow.
Is this a surprise to literally anyone? If you buy into a corporate platform you get a corporate platform.
Make fake facebook account. All problems solved.
Are the devices any good?
Nice information
Fun fact: most of the people need neither Facebook nor Oculus.
Also, most of the people do not need freedom of speech directly, but rely on it without knowing. Similar story here. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
Sure we need. That's why boycotting products of the violator, nevermind Facebook or China, is one of the easiest and efficient forms of protesting and opposing violations.
Last time I created a fresh account I got banned. Didn't use any VPN, my email was a fresh Gmail address and I didn't use any fake picture or send any friend request.
I'm amazed so many people care. Not having a Facebook account for me is social suicide. Helps that Messenger is a very good messaging app and Facebook the main site is a good timewaster. Make a throwaway one if you really despise Facebook so much.
Absolutely not.
No.
Just ordered my Oculus Quest from Costco a week ago, and it's scheduled for delivery today. And I have no problem using Facebook account. Yeah, my data will be used for ads, so what? How is that such a big deal for some people to sell the device they otherwise enjoy?