Meta Accounts: A New Login for VR
oculus.com> Today we’re introducing Meta accounts: a new way for people to log into their VR headsets that doesn’t require a Facebook account.
Great. where can I not signup.
From the company that brought us "shadow" profiles, this is fucking risible. "Instead of a Facebook account, you can have a... uh... Fasebook account. Totally different, we swear!"
Yep, they lost me at buying Oculus.
Meta has no scruples. They'll try to track everything I do. I will not give them any more of my information if I can help it.
Is there a VR headset out there with inside-out tracking that isn't made by a scummy advertising company?
HP Reverb G2. Also happens to be the highest resolution headset I think
Please keep in mind this article from 2 months ago:
“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data,” Facebook engineers say in leaked document.
If that is the case, does it matter whether you have a separate account or not?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvmke/facebook-doesnt-know-...
Wonder if there is a way to jailbreak their headsets and install SteamOS instead.
From Meta's point of view this doesn't change anything.
Your activities and interests on your meta accounts will all be part of the same profile meta keeps on grin your Facebook activity, internet browsing, and anything else they can attach or infer a tracking identity from.
Their "privacy" controls are outward facing - e.g., how your meta account is related to your Facebook profile outside meta, not inside.
This really doesn't seem to be getting to the meat of the matter.
Your neighbor and family may not know that "John Smith" on Facebook is "mariofan#1" playing VR games and "naughty69" doing VR porn, but meta sure will.
But at least we won’t be required to create a FB account, and if the new Meta account is on a independent gaming computer then…..
Oh who are we kidding. We just can’t trust Meta/FB.
Block third party cookies and youre good, no? Havent seen personalized ads in years and the only sites not working are the ones Im not using anyways.
What does it mean to block third party cookies on a VR headset?
I meant cookies in a browser, where theyre used. Where do you see cookies in a VR?
The problem isn't that you need a Facebook account, it's that Meta owns Oculus at all. Call the account whatever you want; if I'm a record in any of Meta's databases then I expect to be linked to a shadow profile and surveilled for their profit. The only control I have over the situation is to never agree to any ToS relationship with Meta. There's literally nothing they can do to change this short of selling Oculus to someone else.
The day Meta bought Oculus they killed the platform for privacy-conscious webizens. I say this as someone who would love to try the Soda Island VR experiences and often lament the acquisition.
"they killed the platform for privacy-conscious webizen"
They are okay with this, because that a VERY small portion of the population.
Most people couldn't care less about what a company does with their data as long as they provide a good product.
Even among "privacy-conscious webizen", I take privacy seriously, I have my Nextcloud homelab, private email, use uBlock, use Wireguard on my phone, and use Linux, yet I have an Oculus Quest 2 with a Facebook account, because that kind of tracking is frankly not worrying to me. I use it to play video games. Of all the places where they can track my interest this is not one I worry about.
Amongst "normal" people Facebook is simply not a dealbreaker. My real concern with VR adoption is much more that my family simply does not see it as interesting.
To be fair the Oculus Quest 2 has literally 4 (5?) cameras and internal view of your house, so it's potentially even more invasive than tracking on the web. I own one too but this is something that bothers me every time I take it out of the box.
We have over a year of data now from Apple's app tracking transparency feature. Only 25% of users have opted in and the trend line is not promising. I think the HN crowd is way ahead of the curve on this topic, but still a good indicator of global sentiment.
There is a difference between "Do you want to be tracked" and "Would you be willing to pay more for a headset that is not made by Facebook". If privacy is free, people will take it. If privacy adds 100$+ to the price tag, people will still pick the cheaper option every time.
People may remove the choice from themselves by supporting data privacy laws.
I think if privacy laws were to be made that restrict what data the Oculus can snoop, Meta wouldn't raise the price to compensate. They would sell or shelve the entire Oculus brand and endeavor.
VR has little value to Meta other than a way to sneak cameras and microphones into your home. If you've seen what the Kinect could do a decade ago with IR cameras, the Oculus has those. The Kinect could monitor your heart rate in real time and track multiple bodies.
Nobody will be thinking about the Oculus when they pass the laws, but they may be thinking about Echos and Nest cams and pass laws to restrict audio and video snooping. So Oculus is along for the ride even at its current level of irrelevance.
I am super bearish on Meta:
- why would anyone trust Meta/FB on anything they say or trust them with your data
- FB became popular because it was easy to use, it was just about uploading and commenting on photos. I don't see any of my family members buying a VR device and connect in metaverse ... there is no way ..
- I don't think people will ever use VR devices for the sole purpose of having meeting, video works just fine
The metaverse does not make sense, what it makes sense is AR, and Apple will be the one dominating the space.
- why would anyone trust Meta/FB on anything they say or trust them with your data
Because people don't care about what is done with their data, because it doesn't affect them. This is why FB is still the most used social media site in the world despite all the negativity. People just want a good product and that's what FB gives. That why Instagram and WhatsApp are also extremely popular despite being owned by FB. People just don't give a fuck. Google is still by far the most popular search engine despite many people trying to create search engine that don't track you. All of them failed to take any market share from Google because Google gives people a good product compared to the rest and that's all what people care about.
People just want a good product, they don't care how you do it.
People don’t care because they don’t understand all the implications of them being tracked. And that’s why I think it’s important that Apple is looking out for the average joe making sure their privacy is protected. Regulation is catching up, slowly but it’s finally taking a stand against companies tracking users and selling their data.
In 10 years from now people will be more privacy aware. See how much impact has had the “ask app not to track”. Things will only get worse for companies like FB.
Unless they find a better way to monetize their users, things will only get worse for companies like FB/Meta.
No metaverse will save them.
Concur. AR's gonna be the next smartphone, as soon as someone launches successful AR glasses. I'm convinced that several major tech companies are seeing enough progress in their R&D departments (or in others'...) that they believe it's not far off. Dunno why else they'd all keep spending so much on AR features & tech when it's obviously a dead-end outside niche applications, so long as you have to hold a device up to use it. All I can figure is they consider it so beneficial to be ready to go when the hardware finally is, and are so sure that day will come in the not-to-distant-future, that they're willing to burn a lot of cash on it now to make sure they're not left behind.
VR's not gonna be mainstream until after AR is. When decent and non-hideous AR glasses can double as VR devices , that is when it might take off, as a secondary use for those. The current bulky power-sucking ones that look dorky, block your sight, and require a whole lot of open space if you want to use them for much—those are never gonna be mainstream.
> why would anyone trust Meta/FB on anything they say or trust them with your data
You should probably ask the ~4B people that use their services.
sure, if FB was such an amazing brand trusted by the billions why would the CEO ditch it and go for a full company re-brand?
Clearly the FB brand is damaged beyond any hope, and this whole metaverse is just a desperate attempt to stay relevant for the next decade. But it is a very long shot.
I agree with you.
Had an extensive conversation with my SO this past weekend about the use of VR tech in education. This was spurred by meeting an individual who was promoting VR for k-12 (I’m in USA) education and that “in 5-10 years kids will all go to school virtually with VR”.
Idk the whole thought of VR as a replacement for the “education system” gives me chills. I acknowledge the use of VR tech can be correctly implemented as a “tool” but IMO not a sole replacement for “real world” things.
VR to me just seems like tech searching for a use case rather than actually solving a problem - I personally argue this to be similar to crypto currencies.
> I personally argue this to be similar to crypto currencies.
Yes, tech in desperate need of a purpose. Today there is none.
10 years ago, did you see all your family members keeping a computer with a constant internet connection in their pocket? I think our predictive abilities of the future are often lacking.
Always amused at people citing our inability to predict the future as evidence that their view of the future is inevitable.
No, but wearing a VR set or glasses with cameras and what not is too invasive. And for what? Meeting in the metaverse? Video works great, I don't need an "immersive" experience.
Also, most of my family members have a pretty basic usage of smart phones.
But hey, I know nothing, this is just my opinion. Who knows, people are unpredictable.
There was no need for instant messaging and yet people don't use mail exclusively.
VR will work for the next generation when children grow up on VR playgrounds because parents can pretend that they don't watch tv all day.
You don't need a phone anymore. An LTE watch and a VR headset are enough for your online activities because the majority of time is spent in VR. If you have to decide between a cheap phone and a cheap VR set or a good VR set because you already have the watch, you will choose the VR set. You won't chose the expensive phone alone, because you need a VR set to interact with your friends.
Once the market accepts VR, regular flats become too expensive and everybody will live in small, windowless apartment that are only bearable when you spent all your time in VR. And since you spent all your time in VR, it's perfectly acceptable to rent a small, windowless apartment.
The problem is that VR sucks and there's no way around that with the current trajectory of tech.
Take this cringey "demo" from meta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAL2JZxpoGY
It's not possible. It's just not possible with the tech we have or will have any time soon. Start with 35 seconds in. Person on the right is floating legs out. This is impossible. It's possible to render that, but it's impossible to feel like you're floating in that position. We can ignore the presumed motion sickness. The video heavily implies that is her reality. But it's not. We cannot achieve the kind of presence you see in this or other popular things like ready player one. What is she really doing in the real world. Sitting down? Standing up?
Mark says "Whoa, we're floating in space", which is, for the record, so incredibly unimpressive for a digital world but whatever. He is not floating. He will not feel like he's floating. He will need either shitty physics or stupid controllers to move around. Which is fine for a game, but it's not going to set up the scene they're showing here.
They're also nimbly dealing cards with their hands. Good luck building that network replicated physics engine and hand inputs.
Black girl does a backflip. Sure, we can do backflips in games. But she also clearly has a lot of fun doing it. This person really feels like they're doing a backflip. Impossible.
And lastly, looking at abstract shitty visuals is not that interesting!
People can't spend the majority of their time in VR if they're not at home. Everyone can always look at their phone they aren't immediately preoccupied.
I agree with you and your argument.
My one counter point is from playing Ocarina of Time on my N64: when Link jumps off a high object, my body and brain also experience the sensation of “falling” or the “sensation of expecting the full force of gravity in air”. It’s weird to describe in words but maybe it translates. Im curious to what objects/entities our minds can ascribe a “physical self” to, particularly in VR space.
Im aware of fields of study that encapsulate “phantom limb” type stuff and have experienced the sensation second hand (no pun intended my mom was an amputee). But am very curious how our brains process VR - yet I’ve never worn a headset and have very little desire to do so..
Jumping off things in VR is very unpleasant. You expect to feel things physically but do not. It's one of the more nauseating things to try and do. The worst part is the landing of course. You have an intuitive understanding of how landing works in real life. But video game characters tend to just stop on straight legs, especially in VR.
The landing animations you might see in some games don't work in VR. It's very awkward.
Cartoons don't look real and yet they are a useful medium. VR doesn't have to be real. VR just has to be better than regular phones.
>People can't spend the majority of their time in VR if they're not at home.
Why would people leave home? With VR, there is no need for transport or additional real estate. The market will make sure that the average person won't be able to afford leaving their home.
> Why would people leave home? With VR, there is no need for transport or additional real estate. The market will make sure that the average person won't be able to afford leaving their home.
Poor people tend to handle last mile in person service jobs. That's not going anywhere.
> Cartoons don't look real and yet they are a useful medium. VR doesn't have to be real. VR just has to be better than regular phones.
Meta is selling it as something that feels real. They're not selling it as better phones. And you're claiming its going to comprise 100% of people's lives such that they never go outside anymore. Nonsense.
>Poor people tend to handle last mile in person service jobs. That's not going anywhere.
Right. But what are they going to do when they return from work?
>Meta is selling it as something that feels real. They're not selling it as better phones.
Right now, they target early adopters. That doesn't say much about how VR will be used. Compared to mobile phones, this is the time when people had phones in their car to show off. There is no network effect yet where you have to be in VR because your friends are in VR. The VR iphone hasn't been invented yet.
However, the network effect will come soon. Whoever owns the VR space first has a huge moat. Nobody wants to be Google or MS trying to close the gap to Apple. Thus all the big players will very very aggressively push their hardware into the market once it has all the features for mass adoption.
>And you're claiming its going to comprise 100% of people's lives such that they never go outside anymore. Nonsense.
Then I made my point too strong. Some people will go outside, especially those who have access to nice 'outsides'. But if you don't have a garden, and you live in an area without a park, and you don't have money to spend time in a bar, what are you going to do if you have access to technology that gives you the illusion of a garden, a park and money to spend on luxury items?
Urban density will increase because that's what drives innovation. But that will make living condition for the masses worse. The way out is VR.
I already limit screen time for my kids at max 1h a day. You can image how can I feel as parent, seeing my kids spending hours in the freaking metaverse with screens and headphones pretty much embedded in their face. Not gonna happen.
Good for you and your children. When it comes to VR set market penetration, do you think your family represents the majority or are you an outlier?
When I saw the first presentation for the iPhone I absolutely saw it as the future. And that was 15 years ago.
Ten years ago I remember being in Best Buy and looking at this stupid 3D TV that was so obviously going to fail because it was a bad idea.
I was also at a party a few months ago that the topic of the metaverse came up and someone was talking about how it was the next big thing but had never used an Oculus. Then the host mentioned how they have an Oculus if anyone wanted to try it. You know how many people tried it that day even though most had never tried VR? ZERO. No one wanted to bother with this headset. Even the guy who was going on and on about how it was the future wasn't interested in actually trying the very product he was talking about.
It is only interesting in conversation as the next big thing in the abstract.
Interesting point - I commented above on something and mentioned my nonexistent desire to try a headset. Do you think the host/headset owner didn’t want to try it because it’s a hassle or something? It seems like the biggest drawback of VR is that in wearing one you’re removed from your physical environment (unlike a computer, phone, or physical book).
Edit: yeah you’ve described it quite well in saying it’s only interesting to talk about
The reason to be bearish isn't because of privacy, it's because their existing social networks are declining, and Zuck has hitched his cart to a niche gaming setup.
Just after leaks of a killer VR headset from Valve? No thank you, Meta.
For those not in the know, Valve is coming out with a successor to the Index headset called Valve Deckard. They'll probably announce it later this year. From the leaked information, it looks like an absolute beast of a headset.
I didn't realize the Index was still being sold - it was unavailable so long that I thought they launched it, sold the initial batch, then never made more and abandoned the product. As a result, I wrote Valve off as "launches awesome tech demos but doesn't want to make consumer products".
(I thought they also launched then cancelled another hardware product, but I don't remember details and can't find anything, so my memory may be playing tricks on me? Maybe I subconsciously mixed up the Nvidia Shield and Valve?)
The Deckard seems to be standalone too. That's excellent. In practice, being standalone was a killer feature. You can just grab and use it like a phone, instead of having to boot a PC, mess around with cables, make sure the lighthouses are powered up, inevitably spend the first 15 minutes debugging the setup... (and of course having to own a gaming PC in the first place was also a significant hurdle).
> (I thought they also launched then cancelled another hardware product, but I don't remember details and can't find anything, so my memory may be playing tricks on me? Maybe I subconsciously mixed up the Nvidia Shield and Valve?)
There was Steam Link, another little hardware experiment that boiled down to an ARM chip in a black box that streamed games from your PC. I heard great stuff from the people who used them (Ethernet is a must-have, obviously), and they were priced really competitively iirc ($25 or something?). In any case, the product never really saw mainstream success and ended up going the way of the Steam Controller, getting excess stock sold-off at $5/piece just to get the units out of their warehouse.
Nowadays, much as you've highlighted, Valve takes a lot of caution with their product releases. Back in the Steam Machine/Controller/Link era, I think Valve forgot that they aren't a lifestyle company and ultimately make highly-desirable niche products. With the Valve Index and Steam Deck, though, I think Valve is finally settling into a groove. Part of that groove is probably not mass-producing products that don't even have pre-orders open yet, the Index and Deck are pretty good examples of learning that lesson.
Index is on the sales rankings like since forever. It is always in the top 10 sales (probably due to its high pricing?)
From what we know, it will be both standalone but will also be able to connect to a PC to make use of a more powerful GPU.
The Steam Link was pretty Shield-like, in that it supported game streaming.
Yes but for how much? The Oculus 2 is crazy cheap and more accessible to a wider audience. I doubt that will be. I imagine ~Facebook~ Meta took a loss on every headset sold.
Deckard Cain? Stay while and listen.
More likely named after Rick Deckard (Blade Runner)? After all Diablo is a Blizzard IP.
And it's also probably not the final name.
I presumed some relation to the steam deck
I assume it's both, a pun.
How exactly does this address the privacy concerns underlying the previous model? They still require me to have a “social” profile. I never agreed to that when I bought my Oculus Rift back in 2016. In effect, my Rift remains bricked unless I agree to have a presence in their dystopian Metaverse. No thank you!
Have you turned on your device in the past year? Social/FB profiles haven't been required for Rift/CV* for a few years at this point.
Small counterpoint, you're not able to do some social things without signing in (I have a Rift on permaloan from a friend who bought an Index).
You're right I don't _need_ to sign in, but I wish I could chat/ compete with friends. I can even receive friend requests, but I can't accept them.
It's not a huge deal, but the FOMO push to sign into FB is a bummer each time I use it.
This is a bait and switch. There's no reason to believe that Facebook will remain benevolent in the future. They will switch back to requiring some thing they can use to collect and sell your personal data even if it's not called Facebook. That was the point of them buying Oculus. They never tried to make money on the hardware.
I'm positive they will still correlate activity from your Meta account with your FB. One possible point of this is to keep Meta users with access to their purchased content while Facebook maintains their ability to block/restrict user access on the platform.
I think the reason is more prosaic. Oculus Quest is a complete nonstarter in business for many companies because Facebook-anything is simply a no-go.
And they need to penetrate into this market because that's where the money is, not in subsidized headset retail.
Now whether someone will buy this "no need for Facebook anymore but not really" shtick is another story.
with that reasoning they would need to allow Google or MS AD accounts.
All Facebook needs is data that they can tie to a phone number or primary email. Geolocation and first name would be enough for that.
I think the real reason for requiring Facebook accounts was just padding user numbers and events for a quarterly report (likely for somebody's bonus to land).
But I don't have a Facebook account so what is there to correlate?
Facebook maintains “shadow profile” accounts for people who have not personally made an account [1], the answer to your question is “whatever information your friends and family exposed on your behalf and which is linkable to you”.
[1] https://medium.com/@SpiderOak/facebook-shadow-profiles-a-pro...
They did. I suspect that if they still do, there's going too be a really painful GDPR penalty heading their way.
They can still do it to non-Europeans
How can they tell how an email address is European?
Because you told them while you were creating your Meta account, and because the credit card you entered matched what you told them.
Sure, but we are talking about shadow accounts, not Meta accounts.
Cost of doing business? Is GDPR protecting me as an American from Facebook shadow profiling me? How significant are GDPR fines?
In theory 4% from yearly revenue (not earnings, revenue), in practice I haven’t seen it being applied.
Here you go. Click your country's flag to see your results https://www.enforcementtracker.com (if you're European, that is).
so you think they are confident enough to link somebodies randomly created alias, let's say "InteretDude420" to a real name? What if opened a VR Arcade and owned 100 Oculus Quests and made 100 separate accounts?
>so you think they are confident enough to link somebodies randomly created alias, let's say "InteretDude420" to a real name?
After a certain amount of fingerprinting, absolutely. It's not as if they are solely relying on user-submitted information such as a handle to make that link. And if no link can be made right this second, they can just continue to collect data under "InteretDude420" until they reach a certain amount of confidence to link it to a real identity.
And, even if they get it wrong some % of the time, who would ever notice or find out? Eventually they just get more data and increase the confidence rating for the correlation.
It is surprising how little information (even "anonymized information") is needed to de-anonymize someone. Plenty of papers on the subject if you are curious.
Yes, zip code/geo-location plus a few other points of personal data are often enough to identify an individual. Then tie that to a browser fingerprint and you can tie together all their "anonymous" screen names.
I read recently (or heard in a podcast; can't find the source lamentably) that almost all people can be uniquely identified by the top three locations they spend most time at.
I would expect most people spend most of their time at home and at work, so that doesn't really surprise me.
> let's say "InteretDude420" to a real name
For many targeted / personalized ads purposes you don't really care about the real name. You mostly care about linking hardware / software identifiers (IDFA etc.) to some kind of profile that you attached information to (Likes technology, fashion, classical music,...).
If you make 100 separate accounts and open a VR arcade you are probably just filtered out as an anomaly. It's not about having a 100% coverage, it's about having good enough coverage of most users. Just like filter out bot or ad blocker users as there's still enough regular people.
Considering all the metadata they can collect over indefinite periods of time, with 100% certainty, unless you invest extraordinary effort to give them enough misleading data.
There are plenty of studies (example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3/) that show you need only limited amounts of data to be able to deanonymize people.
Facebook allegedly buys transaction data (you know like banks and payment processors etc. sell). So they have a browser fingerprint for you via cookies (you know that like and share button on every page on the internet) or just plain JS fingerprinting.
Matching all that data to the real information you just ran through paypal or other merchant (some merchants sell this data directly) is something an intern can do on their first day.
I thought they denied maintaining shadow profiles though? There seems to be some people at FB who actually care about getting this stuff right and doing the right thing but economic forces at this point appear to be pushing most of the company in a very different direction.
A massive number of sites have Facebook tracking built in, since FB pays them a fraction of a penny for each visit it monitors. They don't care what username you're using; they just need to correlative fingerprinting (IP addresses, browser/device profile, any data from other apps installed on the same device, etc).
If you opened that arcade, they'd probably recognize that through a couple hundred different datapoints and use that to further analyze user behavior (For example: Which FB/Instagram users went to your arcade, stayed for a significant amount of time, then left. Of those, which don't already own a Quest -- market to them).
Presumably if you use their app marketplace you'll have valid credit card information stored in a data center of there's somewhere.
Facebook indeed collects data on non-users
https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-pr...
It is deeper than that. After I google for anything , I generally see advertisements in my Facebook app for the specific thing. There is certainly some invisible link between Goog and Febu.
The word you're thinking of is remarketing.
You may not have an account on Facebook, but Facebook has an account on you.
It gets populated with data uploaded by other people, JavaScript widgets on random web pages that you visit, etc.
None that you know of.
> That was the point of them buying (and ruining) Oculus.
The point of them buying Oculus is because MZ thinks that VR might be the future, and he wants to own that space (Lest Facebook fade into irrelevance as a one-trick pony).
I'm of the opinion that the data they could slurp up from mining your VR usage is of limited use, because it won't meaningfully improve ad targeting. And if it doesn't improve ad targeting, there's no reason for advertisers to pay FB more.
> I'm of the opinion that the data they could slurp up from mining your VR usage is of limited use, because it won't meaningfully improve ad targeting.
Facebook is going to get lots more data than they get from you on desktop and mobile.
“…one of the things I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in.” — Mark Zuckerberg
This quote seems to be about using face/eye tracking to improve the VR itself, not something about ads or data mining.
Having worked very briefly at a company that survived on ad-sales, I can assure you that face/eye tracking will definitely be used as a way to sell more or charge more for ads on the platform. At the very least it will be a way for a marketing team to go back to their bosses about how sticky their ad was. Ie ‘People looked at our ad for an average of 10 seconds!’
Yes, and there’s value to that. “Better avatars” is a central part of Zuck’s public sales pitch.
But the actual endgame is that Meta has been building a portfolio of patents that leverage eye and face tracking to better target you with ads and other content.
“The next patent really gets into it…It’s called ‘Techniques for emotion detection and content delivery’. This one is a straight up flowchart for capturing the user’s image via the camera to track your emotions when viewing different types of content. [Meta] could tie your emotional states when checking out videos, ads or baby pictures and serve up content in the future just by reading your initial state of emotion.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/06/08/how-fac...
Yeah, many VR consumers are interested in face/eye tracking as well, because it's the logical next step for improving social VR (which a social networking giant is obviously interested in). No need to read further sinister motives into it.
I can reply to this comment now but will repost the previous reply:
Not sure why I can’t reply to the sibling comment here but I still cannot trust Meta/MZ for anything - even if the stated goal of eye tracking is to “improve the platform” “They trust me - dumb fucks” Mark Zuckerberg
Not sure why I can’t reply to the sibling comment here but I still cannot trust Meta/MZ for anything - even if the stated goal of eye tracking is to “improve the platform”
“They trust me - dumb fucks” Mark Zuckerberg
Edit: can reply as previously desired and edited to reflect that
If VR takes shape as imagined by Meta, though I personally don't believe it will, they will absolutely be in an excellent position to market to and profile you. I think the vision is that everyone spends most of their online time in VR - so interacting with all of one's interests/hobbies/discussions, online contacts, searches. All very valuable for monetization through advertisement and profiling.
I was so pumped for Oculus. I was following them way before Carmack joined. I had a DK2. What facebook did to Oculus is a good enough reason for me to hate them intensely forever.
What exactly did they "do" to oculus besides give them a ton of funding and try to bring them into the mainstream?
They broke the emerging VR software ecosystem into the open side which many companies supported and a Facebook only proprietary one they asserted ownership and control of. Before Facebook bought Oculus there was cooperation and native software interoptibility between Vive and Rift.
Then they stopped supporting desktop head mounted displays for the most part and switched to building face mounted VR computers that happened to have an initially janky, and always higher latency, passthrough mode to support acting as a display for a real computer.
>They broke the emerging VR software ecosystem into the open side which many companies supported and a Facebook only proprietary one
What? There used to be a bunch of different VR platforms, and only recently has the industry settled on a single open standard, OpenXR[1], and Facebook was (or at least claims to be[2]) one of the major contributors to that open standard.
There are a lot of things you can criticize Meta for doing with Oculus, but opposing open standards isn't one of them.
The second point doesn't make sense at all. Consumers vastly prefer standalone VR, and it was always the future.
For the first point, I'll give you that they prefer playing on their own platform. But they haven't "broken" anything. While yes you do need a software layer, e.g. Revive, you can still play steam games on oculus and oculus games on an index. And you have no idea whether that would have happened anyway as one of these companies got bigger.
Google used to say "do no evil" and now they don't, and they didn't get acquired before they changed. These things just happen.
>Before Facebook bought Oculus there was cooperation and native software interoptibility between Vive and Rift.
With respect, did you ever use a Vive or a Rift CV1? They absolutely had much worst interoperability prior to FB. The launch of CV2 gated it behind the Oculus store, making it impossible to use Steam with the CV2 before overwhelming negative feedback changed it.
This has been what I've found frustrating about most past VR headsets or attempts to build one: I don't want a VR headset to be like a phone or laptop and have its own computer and app ecosystem; I want a peripheral that attaches to my phone and laptop.
You can connect any oculus quest device to your desktop and use it just like Vive with steamvr aka peripheral. It is an officially supported functionality. They didnt remove it by creating Quest, they just added standalone mode in addition to the "peripheral" mode.
If anything FB has greatly improved this. Airlink is a literal step-change improvement to VR that allows the user to have a totally wireless PC VR experience, something that was assumed to be very difficult/impossible over existing wireless standards.
but you can't create lock-in and an app store out of that.
By way of analogy: They took a precocious, promising young child and assimilated her into the Borg.
> That was the point of them buying Oculus. They never tried to make money on the hardware.
They're not trying to make money from the hardware just like most gaming console companies don't make money from the hardware initially. Meta is trying to dominate the VR app market and make money from the Oculus Store. They'll probably take a similar approach to the App Store and Play Store.
It's a bit pedantic, but Facebook does not sell your personal data. They use it to target advertising. And at this point, every large tech company does the same thing. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. They all make significant revenue from advertising and they all use data they collect from you to target ads.
So, not that targeted advertising is so great, but it's looking like pretty much any hardware device from big tech companies in the future is going to work this way. I don't think Facebook is any different from the others any more.
> It's a bit pedantic, but Facebook does not sell your personal data. They use it to target advertising.
But they also leak personal data. A lot.
At this point, I'm willing to believe that the other adtech-corporations are more likely to be interested and capable in maintaining your data out of the prying eyes (of competing adtech-corporations).
> But they also leak personal data. A lot.
Some examples please. In recent memory I can only think of examples where services violated TOS (which I'm not sure how FB could prevent) or got authorization from the end user (as in the Cambridge Analytica case).
Any examples of them leaking data as a result of their own processes?
Already posted this above
“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data,” Facebook engineers say in leaked document.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvmke/facebook-doesnt-know-...
And? I'm not sure what this has to do with actual leaked data. I'm sure that many companies do not have a high quality data monitoring system, but very few actually leak data to the public.
It is an interesting growth play that Meta is doing (putting aside our feelings about it).
By putting out relatively cheap VR headsets and requiring a meta (Facebook) account to use it, they are getting young people signed up for meta. Those young people might not have signed up for Facebook/Meta otherwise. It's a sneaky way to reduce friction and maybe convert young people onto the social media platform.
It also reminds me of how google's social network automatically created profiles on their social media spot. That experiment failed. Will meta's growth play fail?
This is purely me trying to figure out the business angle.
I think you're reading way too much into this.
Meta has a VR platform and needs some form of auth. Reusing their existing auth was the lowest friction approach both in development and user experience.
I doubt they care very much about recruiting into their platform through VR. Their main business goal with VR is to own the app marketplace through Oculus Store. So far, they are far ahead of anyone else in the space.
Misleading title. Going from requiring a Facebook account to a Meta Account is a very minor move.
This looks like it's "just" follow-through from previous headlines.
s/Facebook/Meta/g
As someone with an Instagram account but not a Facebook account, this does move the needle for me slightly, but my enthusiasm for opening a Meta VR account is only slightly higher than my zero interest in opening a Facebook account.
You'll still need to add an email address, your name, DOB, a phone number, and payment info. To retain your privacy, you can easily create an email alias and put in a fake name and DOB. A paid Twilio number should work. A privacy.com (or similar service) should also work.
A paid twilio number doesn't work.
Really? It's worked for me on services that don't allow virtual numbers. If that's no longer the case I'm open to alternative solutions.
This misstep cost them a heck of a lot of goodwill in their community.
We had to cancel an entire program we'd built around Oculus for VR content creation, and I filed an FTC complaint after the Facebook account requirement.
After recent news I decided to give them another chance with a Quest 2, and because my Oculus dev account and the FB profile I closed in 2006 that I tried to merge it with didn't have matching info, I've been locked out. I'm hanging tight until this Meta thing goes into effect to switch, but if it's a hassle, I'll gladly spend up to $800 on a Deckard not to deal with Meta again.
Metaverse is Zuckerberg's wet dream. I always remember Virtual Sex Scene from Demolition Man[0].
"Ewwww you mean the exchange of bodily fluids!"
What a film!
I do not appreciate this work of art being compared to Zucks wet dream tho!
>I do not appreciate this work of art being compared to Zucks wet dream tho!
You can put your Oculus VR headset, connect to the internet and have sex with anyone from the Facebook ofc if they are of legal age and they give you permission. ;)
That can be marketing pitch for Facebook's VR headset!
Well correct me if I'm wrong but so far as I can tell you still need a 'Meta' account to use them so... Not so great as it sounds.
Can I now safely consume adult VR content without anyone watching me back?
I guess that removes one block from us buying Oculus devices. I still have no clear idea how we buy them for a classroom, but I guess this is a good start. It still sounds like its a Facebook account in another form.
> Your “Friends” will now become “Followers,” similar to Instagram’s existing model.
Don't see how this makes sense for VR, where you probably want to hang out with your friends and play games. Followers?
On the contrary! VR takes "following" to the next level. An abstraction that suddenly becomes much more concrete and literal. It is beautiful.
At last it becomes truly creepy and not just vaguely concerning.
You don't need to be in the street to be followed anymore, you can now stay at home for this.
(please don't take my comment seriously, I just wanted to share a though that was very entertaining to me)
Jesus...
Actually now I can imagine the VR version of Twitch. A bit creepier I think.
I will admit this is very tempting.
The Quest 2 is the only reasonably priced standalone headset.
I'll probably wait until the end of the year though, hopefully ANYONE else will release a solid standalone
I gave my Quest away when they announced they were requiring a Facebook account. I liked it, but ultimately decided it had been a mistake to use something owned by Facebook, and I should have seen where it would go. Maybe I did, but had been too excited by the idea of VR. I'm not going to buy another device now, expecting that their fundamental nature as a company will eventually win out. It's a frog/scorpion situation with them.
too late; already moved on.
Exactly this. Meta devices are permanently off the table for me.
This is really a big move from Meta, and very right one.
Consider how many countries can't directly use Facebook, they had to use a VPN to first login Facebook, then the headsets, its ridiculous. Many novice users have even no idea what is a VPN, so they have to put away the headsets just bought from the online.
I heard many stories of this, now finally changed.
Good job Meta!
Since I still login to Facebook at least once a month to see what my family is doing, I see no reason for me to switch.
If I was starting with a new device with no prior purchases of entertainment content, then I would create an Oculus account.
For me, Oculus is the one really great thing about Meta/Facebook. It is my favorite toy.
I'm still disappointed that Facebook bought Oculus. I was a big Oculus Rift user, but I switched to a Valve Index when Facebook got involved. I don't want Facebook monetizing my data and my gaming life.
It sucks because the Valve software just isn't anywhere close to being as good. And they haven't shown any meaningful signs of improvement in the last two years. I don't think they are ever going to get it like Oculus used to. I think they'll eventually decide VR is not worth it because of a lack of user engagement, when in reality the problem is that no one wants to constantly fight with Valve's obstinate software just to play VR games.
> I don't want Facebook monetizing my data and my gaming life.
Do you use the Steam store? It's related "recommendation" queue? Is that not an example of Valve monetizing your data/gaming habits?
To my knowledge Steam/Valve is in the business of selling games, not monetizing my personal info by selling it to third parties.
Thanks for the info. I just checked out the Valve Index. I don’t think it woks with my MacBook, but it looks like a promising product. I will try to remember to check them out in the future.
Only Mark Zuckerberg could possibly announce with a straight face (without apologizing for having made a Facebook login mandatory previously) this, as if he's doing us a favor. The man is a narcissist and megalomaniac
meta (heh): can’t view this page without accepting all cookies, including Facebook ad ones, which it says you can control on your cookie settings page (404 link) but if you don’t have a Facebook account you can’t access
Doesn't change the Oculus games I lost from their forced integration.
Easy solution: Never spend money on a Meta product.
I’ve had one just laying around since they announced this. I have an updated or anything. Still not quite trusting Facebook…
Ah cool, they're going to use your Oculus account to open a Meta account for you. How convenient.
It's not automatic, you have to do it manually. If you don't the device won't work anymore.
> After January 1, 2023, you’ll need to set up a Meta account to continue using your VR device. When you update your Oculus account to a Meta account, the Supplemental Meta Platforms Technologies Terms of Service and Supplemental Meta Platforms Technologies Privacy Policy will apply to you.
I’m really hoping the open source implementations can catch up. As it stands, I’ve sidelined my VR headset until I can get it working without the Oculus software at all. Privacy is just too important for me - why would I want to visit a virtual world just to have all of my activity stalked by Meta of all companies.
So this is the long awaited promise to use oculus with a facebook account? What a joke.
All I want is to be able to use the Oculus without any account at all. Just offline.
Just waiting for Apple to enter VR market and pull market share from Facebook Oculus
Meta/Facebook is actually a good company, and I trust them. They're really clear about how they use your data, and as far as I can tell (being a FANG worker), you can trust what they say about data usage
In fact, I'd trust them with my data more than a bank (competency is more important)
Steam valve VR headset all the way. Not touching one thing from Facebook.
NewAccount.source = Meta SameOldTableOfAccounts.add(NewAccount)
Update 2023: now a facebook account is required!
Apple is coming for their metaverse.
You can't create an Apple ID without a phone number. In Germany, you can't get a phone number without government ID.
You can't install any apps on Apple mobile devices without an Apple ID.
You will need an Apple ID.
And it will have no adult VR content.
> And it will have no adult VR content.
With the new EU rules there would be nothing stopping anyone from viewing such stuff, because to my understanding those rules apply universally to the company, not just to individual products.
Ok, good point, so in the EU ... perhaps.
guess their find & replace "Facebook -> Meta" task completed
Fuck Facebook.
It’s afraid
Too late.
yeah once the sales and stock prices are up, it's gonna be business as usual
@dang This is a heavily editorialized bait-and-switch title, posted by a user who is a VP at Facebook. That doesn't seem above board.
I am actually no longer working for Meta. I do think the title reflects the news and is factually correct. But happy for @dang to change it back as it’s not exactly the title of the article
Ideally the submission title would have matched the blog title and then not only would it have been factually correct but it would have also not had any omissions. It seems disingenuous to me to post a submission with that title knowing how unpopular the FB account requirement is in this circle while tacitly omitting the fact that a Meta account is going to be required. It might not have been your intent but it did come across as suspicious and as it is it comes across as a Lie of Omission.
Sure, agreed, I try to always submit the exact title for that reason but I got lazy as I was on my phone.
It does not reflect the news accurately. Very few people here distinguish between "Meta" and "Facebook". An account is still required to use the device, and that account is still owned by Meta/Facebook.
(As an aside, you should probably update your HN profile, it still reads "Now VP of AI at Facebook.")
Do you still hold stock?
I am sure the market move is going to be drastic.
I do.
>I do think the title reflects the news and is factually correct.
This is one of those times where one is only "technically" correct thanks to weasel-y phrasing.
Who posted it doesn't really matter when the title has been changed this much. The title being so drastically editorialized is the real issue.
Ok, changed. Submitted title was "A Facebook account is no longer required to use Meta VR devices".
Thanks!
Editorializing titles has become completely standard and I rarely see them fixed anymore despite the comments. Of course others also post editorialized titles when they see it happening daily on the front page.
Oh get over it, your hate for FB is noted. The title is accurate, the information is news, and IMO HN users are smart enough to know what a PR release is when they read it.
What are you worried about? That folks will walk this earth thinking you have to use a Meta account instead of a Facebook account to log into your VR app?
The post was posted by a (edit: recently ex-) VP at Facebook, and the posted title, while strictly accurate, doesn't mention that there's a brand new account type that you need to have. I read this at first as "I can finally buy a VR headset and use it as regular hardware", not "FB is still going to track my usage, just under their new name".
"Introducing Meta Accounts: A New Login for VR" is the actual title, and should be used instead of this one.
There's user accounts for almost every software business out there that has any form of online component. You have a user account on this very site. I don't get the complaint.
The complaint is that many people don't trust Facebook (or Meta or whatever they change their name to tomorrow) and don't want a _Facebook_ account. The title implies that their needs will be met: that they will be able to buy Oculus hardware without having to interact with Facebook's data-gathering. But that's a lie: they are just rebranding the name of the login system, not actually changing anything.
The title (currently "A Facebook account is no longer required to use Meta VR devices (oculus.com)" which is not the title of the article) is specifically written to get the attention of that Facebook-distrusting group and in that way is explicitly and I believe intentionally misleading.
The oculus is clearly a hardware, not a software product, so GP's point stands.
Yea, requiring an online account to use a head mounted display makes as much sense as requiring an online account to use a monitor.
Sure, require an account to do purchases through their online store, that makes sense. But why on earth do you need an account to use an unconnected piece of hardware? I don't need to log in to an account to use my monitor, mouse, keyboard, or joystick.
EDIT, answering my own question:
The only reason these accounts are required is that Facebook wants to pretend Oculus is not just the HMD but also the whole "ecosystem" including the store, their toxic social media properties, and their ridiculous metaverse. I don't buy into this fantasy of theirs, and will never buy another Oculus until they are treated as dumb displays.
I do miss the days when I could buy hardware (or appliances, for that matter) and just use it as hardware, without signing into it. I miss not having everything have a mandatory online presence.
But the bigger issue here is that this account is owned by the company formerly known as Facebook, and that company has given me absolutely zero reason to trust them with any data whatsoever. I don't mind having a Steam account, because Valve hasn't had scandal after scandal of them abusing user data in egregious ways.
>Valve hasn't had scandal after scandal of them abusing user data in egregious ways.
Any real examples? Scandal after scandal implies there should be many, but in recent memory I can't think of FB directly abusing user data besides it being repeated as truth on HN.
FB/Meta tracking your usage isn't even discussed in the article, and nothing about not tracking is suggested at all in the title.
This just seems like an excuse to rant about disliking Facebook.
Instead, a Meta account is required.
I see what you did there.
To be fair: You needed an Oculus account to use an Oculus, just like you need a Switch account or a Steam account. Hardware with a digital store requires an account.
A Facebook account is much more restrictive than say a Steam account. Facebook tries to get you to use your real name for example. Who in the world wants to use their real name playing a video game?
You actually don't need a Switch account. You can just play offline and buy physical games. I don't think updates need an account either
> To be fair: You needed an Oculus account to use an Oculus
From the mail we received: you can continue using your Oculus account until January 1, 2023. After this date a Meta account will be required to *continue* using your Meta VR devices.
It's weird to me that I need to create a new account to continue using my device.
That is a sign of a piece of hardware that you do not own.
> Hardware with a digital store requires an account.
Can't you play games without the store? Like streaming games from your PC or side loading games. You shouldn't need an account if you're not going to use the store.
Officially: no, you need an Oculus account to even get a Quest set up to do streaming, and you need to separately make your account a developer account to unlock sideloading.
I have a PlayStation, and play dozens of games, yet Sony doesn't know I exist.
Valve has done the right thing here and made it possible to use the Deck and Index without a Steam account. Granted, they haven't made it easy, but it is possible and they clearly haven't deliberately locked down their hardware.
You don't need a Steam account to use a SteamDeck, only to use the Steam store.
I thought you were kidding until I clicked through. How is this better in any way?
Any digital store or forum requires you to have an account. You are using an account right now to post on Hacker News. So obviously accounts can be less restrictive and have less tracking than a typical Facebook account.
The question is, will a Meta account be different than an FB account? I would argue it has to be because its essentially a game/ media device and they will destroy their market if they try to keep up a policy of not letting people create fake accounts. No one wants to play video games with their real name and address. There had been a problem of Quest 2s getting bricked because kids were using them on a "fake" account. They need kids.
> Any digital store or forum requires you to have an account.
The problem isn’t that one needs an account.
> The question is, will a Meta account be different than an FB account?
This is a marketing rebrand of Facebook accounts. In the short term, Meta will position it as a separate identity system. In the long term, each person will have one Meta account for all Meta services.
> No one wants to play video games with their real name and address.
Meta may allow this, but in every case Meta will know who’s behind each Meta identity.
>Any digital store or forum requires you to have an account
Maybe I'm not a master of the internet like yourself, but I'm able to use crazy technology like "oidc" and "delegation" to prevent the same entity who runs the carnival to also own my identity.
Plenty of forums don't require an account until you want to write a post, if all you wish to do is consume content you're free to read all you want.
Historically this was the default on the web, it's a relatively recent phenomenon for sites like instagram/fb to require login to even read anything.
YouTube manages to deliver plenty of entertainment value without a login to this day, until you try to look at "mature content".
It's not attached to their most toxic brand so more people will be willing to put up with it, instead of shunning their (excellent) devices due to the toxicity of the brand.
It won't convince everyone, but it will convince some.
A "Meta VR" could be created and used just for work stuff, connected to a work email address and disconnected from personal Facebook or Instagram accounts.
one advantage might be that getting kicked or banned from facebook won't brick your VR devices.
And vice versa: getting banned on the Oculus side won't kill your Facebook account
That's nice, but I still don't trust Meta and will never willingly use their products. The brand is irredeemably tainted because my sense of history goes back decades. I'm not Jesus; I don't forgive and I rarely forget.
Odd to see so much hate for facebook, a company that created:
1. react
2. pytorch
Arguably the two best technology frameworks to come out in the last decade.
Their core business model is inherently evil and they've repeatedly been caught committing more, optional evil on top of it.
So yes, of course I hate them. Weird that you don't.
You can contribute some nice things but still be a bad actor.
Making good things doesn't, and shouldn't, make anyone immune to criticism.
take a moment to think about whether you consistently are in abusive relationships because of one redeeming thing the other person did
Odd to see so much hate for the Nazis on here. They made some really great tanks and submarines!
And jet fighters!
and rockets!
And Volkswagen.
They were such good people, why are they so hated everywhere?
Yes but they also created Facebook.
Are you justifying their retarded decisions just because they created two good libraries that have nothing to do with the original topic?